Awash in the Muck of the Potomac
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Take a good look at the world around you. Although some of you may have families composed of completely faithful Catholics who are not at all influenced by Modernism and its Americanist allies (naturalism, religious indifferentism, religious liberty, egalitarianism, semi-Pelagianism), most of us have family members, some of who are rather closely related, who have defected the Faith in one form or another, immersing themselves headlong into the ravages of the popular culture. The confusion is such that there are some instances of completely traditional Catholic priests, men who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, having to deal with close relatives (parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces nephews) who are completely immersed in the Novus Ordo world of apostasy, betrayal and sacrilege.
Those who are so influenced by the naturalism of the world in which we live think that anyone who takes the Catholic Faith seriously is "not normal." Further opprobrium is reserved for anyone who dares to contend that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of social order and that adherents of false religions have no "civil right" founded in the Divine Positive Law or the Natural Law to propagate their false beliefs openly or to assert publicly that those erroneous, blasphemous beliefs can be the foundation of any sort of personal or social order whatsoever. It is thus the case that many of our relatives and friends look to various "experts" (radio and television talk show hosts, naturalistic commentators of the false opposites of the naturalist left and/or the naturalist right, politicians, "think tank" analysts, psychologists and psychotherapists of one sort or another, celebrities from the artificial world of entertainment and sports, et. al.) to tell what to think, how to dress, and how to act so as to be considered "normal" in the world and to "contribute" to the betterment of "humankind."
As a result of this confusing welter of lies and errors and blasphemies that are but the logical result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry, contradiction and paradox rule the day. We have the anomaly, as I noted last week in
Children of One Revolution After Another, many Americans were outraged by the unquestionably harmful environment created by those Mormons in west Texas while not recognizing that the very children who were forcibly bused out of their compound will be bused sooner or later into public schools whose teachers and "counselors" will provide them with "information" as to how to keep themselves "safe" when engaging in the very behavior proscribed not only by the Sixth and Ninth Commandments but by the statutes of the State of Texas to which they had been subjected in the compound from which they were taken. In other words, conduct that even the civil state proscribes by its legislative enactments is considered abusive in one instance but not in the other. Teenagers may break various statutes with each other without fear of criminal prosecution. Indeed, employees of the civil state (teachers, counselors, "health professionals) will provide these teenagers with the "means" to keep themselves "safe," if not actually encourage promiscuous behavior in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and in violation of the civil state's own criminal laws.
Mind you, I am in no way justifying the abuse that took place in the Mormon compound, only pointing out that a civil state founded on false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles has no rational means by which judge which set of objective evils is unacceptable in some circumstances and is acceptable in others. Some of the children in the Mormon compound had, we are told, broken bones. This is terrible, abhorrent. Yet the same civil authorities who have told us about this kind of genuine abuse have no problem with teenaged girls going to their local baby-killer to have the bones of their preborn babies sucked out or crushed under the cover of law. Child abuse before birth is fine. It is only after birth that child abuse can be circumscribed, well, at least in some circumstances. That is, how long have the various centers run by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America escaped full legal scrutiny for allegations of the abuse of women, both younger and older alike? There is no rational foundation by which a state founded on false premises can distinguish consistently between one set of evils and other sets of evils, between condemning the same set of evils in one circumstance and actually encouraging them in other circumstances.
The result is, of course, insanity, an insanity predicted by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:
Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that "there is one God, one faith, one baptism" may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that "those who are not with Christ are against Him," and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore "without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate." Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: "He who is for the See of Peter is for me." A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: "The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?"
This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?
The Church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books. This was true even in apostolic times for we read that the apostles themselves burned a large number of books. It may be enough to consult the laws of the fifth Council of the Lateran on this matter and the Constitution which Leo X published afterwards lest "that which has been discovered advantageous for the increase of the faith and the spread of useful arts be converted to the contrary use and work harm for the salvation of the faithful." This also was of great concern to the fathers of Trent, who applied a remedy against this great evil by publishing that wholesome decree concerning the Index of books which contain false doctrine. "We must fight valiantly," Clement XIII says in an encyclical letter about the banning of bad books, "as much as the matter itself demands and must exterminate the deadly poison of so many books; for never will the material for error be withdrawn, unless the criminal sources of depravity perish in flames." Thus it is evident that this Holy See has always striven, throughout the ages, to condemn and to remove suspect and harmful books. The teaching of those who reject the censure of books as too heavy and onerous a burden causes immense harm to the Catholic people and to this See. They are even so depraved as to affirm that it is contrary to the principles of law, and they deny the Church the right to decree and to maintain it. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
What does this mean to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (who is not, all efforts at "educating" us "dummies" about sacramental validity to the contrary notwithstanding, a bishop, a little fact that will be reviewed in a few days as "dummies" such as His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., and Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., make their comments on an effort by one conciliar apologist to assert with a straight face that God "would never permit" the loss of the sacraments to occur on a large scale, making one wonder if the word "chastisement" means anything so such an apologist)? Nothing, of course. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, possessed of the thoroughly Modernist notion, contrary to right reason and condemned solemnly by the full force of the Catholic Church (including the Vatican Council, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, The Oath Against Modernism, Humani Generis), that dogmatic truth can be understood in different ways at different times, champions the very condemned proposition of religious liberty that was condemned as a heresy by Pope Pius VII in Post Tam Diuturnas on April 29, 1814, and foreseen by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos as the means by which there would occur "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."
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's "religious liberty"/false ecumenism tour of the United States of America, which was replete with the tranquil and even joy-filled reception by their false claimant to the Throne of Saint Peter of the symbols of various false religions that are hated by God (one wonders if we will be treated to an effort to justify the esteemed paid to these false religions by claiming that such esteem is just part of our "living tradition"), extols the United States of America, which permits under cover of law within its own borders and exports by means of the mass media and its very own foreign policies evils that make a mockery of the Deposit of Faith and thus put into jeopardy the eternal and temporal good of souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.
Here's the latest paean of praise from the chief Modernist in Rome to one of Modernism's fundamental allies, Americanism:
VATICAN CITY, 30 APR 2008 (VIS) - In today's general audience, which was held in St. Peter's Square, the Pope dedicated his remarks to his recent apostolic trip to the U.S.A. and the headquarters of the United Nations, from 15 to 21 April.
After recalling how the motive for his U.S. visit was the bi-centenary of the elevation of the country's first diocese, Baltimore, to the status of metropolitan archdiocese, and the foundation of the sees of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Louisville, the Holy Father affirmed that his aim had been "to announce to everyone the message that 'Christ is our Hope', the phrase which was the theme of my visit".
During the meeting with President George Bush in the White House, said the Pope, "I had the opportunity to pay homage to that great country, which from its beginnings was built on the foundation of a harmonious union between religious, ethical and political principles, and which still constitutes a valid example of healthy laicism, where the religious dimension, in the diversity of its expressions, is not only tolerated but turned to advantage as the 'soul' of the nation and the fundamental guarantee of the rights and duties of human beings".
The Holy Father then went on to explain that he had supported his "brother bishops in their difficult task of spreading the Gospel in a society marked by no small number of contradictions, which also threaten the coherence of Catholics and even of the clergy. I encouraged them to make their voices heard on the moral and social questions of the day, and to form the lay faithful so they become good 'leavening' in the civil community on the base of that fundamental cell which is the family. In this context, I exhorted them to re- present the Sacrament of Marriage as a gift and an indissoluble commitment between a man and a woman, the natural environment in which to welcome and educate children.
"The Church and the family, as well as schools", the Pope added, "must co- operate in offering young people a solid moral education. ... Reflecting upon the painful question of sexual abuse of minors by ordained ministers, I told the bishops of my closeness, and encouraged them in the task of binding wounds and strengthening their relationships with their priests".
During the Eucharistic celebration held in the Nationals Stadium in Washington, said Pope Benedict, "we evoked the Holy Spirit" upon the Church in America that she "may face current and future challenges with courage and hope". And when meeting with representatives of other religions "in what may be considered as the homeland of religious freedom, I recalled how such freedom must be defended with congruous efforts to avoid all forms of discrimination and prejudice. I also highlighted the great responsibility religious leaders have, both in teaching respect and non-violence and in upholding the deepest questions of the human conscience".
On the subject of his visit to U.N. headquarters in New York, the Pope pointed out that "providence gave me the opportunity to confirm" - on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - "the importance of that Charter, recalling its universal foundation, in other words the dignity of the person who was created by God in His image and likeness in order to co- operate in ... His great plan of life and peace".
In St. Patrick's Cathedral the Pope had celebrated Mass for priests and consecrated people. "I will never forget", he said, "with how much warmth they congratulated me for the third anniversary of my election to the See of Peter. It was a moving moment, in which I particularly felt the support of all the Church for my ministry. And I could say the same about my meeting with young people and seminarians".
At Ground Zero "I lit a candle and prayed for all the victims of the terrible tragedy" of 11 September 2001, said the Pope. And he concluded his reminiscences of his U.S. visit with the Eucharistic celebration in New York's Yankee Stadium which he described as "a feast of faith and of brotherhood. ... To that Church which now faces the challenges of the present time, I had the joy of announcing "Christ our Hope', yesterday, today and forever".
Benedict Recalls His Recent Visit to the United States
The old revolutionary is as committed to his revolution as the dying Fidel Castro is committed to his. Healthy laicism translates into "separation of Church and State, considered by the conciliarists to be the optimal situation for the life of the Catholic Church and for all other "religions" and other people of "good will" rather than a direct denial of the sacred rights of Christ the King and of His true Church to be recognized by the civil state as it, the civil state, seeks to foster those conditions in which its citizens can better sanctify and to safe their souls as members of that true Church. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's embrace of a "healthy laicism" cannot be reconciled to Pope Saint Pius X's cogent reiteration of the separation of Church and State contained 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.
As I have noted endlessly on this site, Holy Mother Church will make use of whatever actual situation she finds her children living in at any particular moment in any particular place. She will make use of the "freedoms" accorded all religions--and to irreligion--itself by the modern pluralistic civil state to teach and to sanctify her children. She will do so, however, without conceding anything to the erroneous nature of "religious freedom. She will never teaching her children the immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of exhorting them to pray their Rosaries for the conversion of their fellow citizens and of their nations to the true Faith so that He may reign as King and so that His Most Blessed Mother may be honored publicly as the Queen of Heaven and Earth, Mary our Immaculate Queen.
The counterfeit church of conciliarsm, on the other hand, concedes the validity of a thesis deemed absolutely false and a most pernicious error by a canonized pope. Awash in the muck of the Potomac as it flows into the Tiber, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praises one of the chief cornerstones of Martin Luther's revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church as a new bastion, if you will, of "civil" and "religious freedom" while he extols the United States as the "birthplace" of that freedom, which it is most assuredly, and not to the credit of the American founding. Behold the ruinous results of "civil" and "religious" liberty: a world where the very situation whose corruption was prophesied by Pope Gregory XVI and condemned as emphatically by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.
Our only refuge in this time of apostasy and betrayal is Our Lady, Mary our Immaculate Queen. She has given us her Most Holy Rosary to be our weapon against the heresies and betrayals of all ages, including our own as the Church Militant on earth undergoes its Mystical Passion, Death, and Burial as she lives out the life of her Divine Bridegroom and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We must use the weapon that the Mother of God gave us to crush the demons that afflict us in our own lives and to crush those that afflict us in the world and seek to lead so many Catholics astray by attempting to "read" Catholicism into the apostasies being brought to us "live and in living color" by the counterfeit church of conciliarism on a daily basis.
The very saint we celebrate today, Pope Saint Pius V, a member of Saint Dominic de Guzman's Order of Preachers, exhorted us in Consueverunt Romani, September 17, 1569, to use the Heavenly weapon that is the Rosary, words that are as applicable today as they were then:
The Roman Pontiffs, and the other Holy Fathers, our predecessors, when they were pressed in upon by temporal or spiritual wars, or troubled by other trials, in order that they might more easily escape from these, and having achieved tranquillity, might quietly and fervently be free to devote themselves to God, were wont to implore the divine assistance, through supplications or Litanies to call forth the support of the saints, and with David to lift up their eyes unto the Mountains, trusting with firm hope that thence would they receive aid.
1. Prompted by their example, and, as is piously believed, by the Holy Ghost, the inspired Blessed founder of the Order of Friars Preachers, (whose institutes and rule we ourselves expressly professed when we were in minor orders), in circumstances similar to those in which we now find ourselves, when parts of France and of Italy were unhappily troubled by the heresy of the Albegenses, which blinded so many of the worldly that they were raging most savagely against the priests of the Lord and the clergy, raised his eyes up unto heaven, unto that mountain of the Glorious Virgin Mary, loving Mother of God. For she by her seed has crushed the head of the twisted serpent, and has alone destroyed all heresies, and by the blessed fruit of her womb has saved a world condemned by the fall of our first parent. From her, without human hand, was that stone cut, which, struck by wood, poured forth the abundantly flowing waters of graces. And so Dominic looked to that simple way of praying and beseeching God, accessible to all and wholly pious, which is called the . Interposed with these prayers are certain meditations showing forth the entire life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, thus completing the method of prayer devised by the by the Fathers of the Holy Roman Church. This same method St. Dominic propagated, and it was, spread by the Friars of Blessed Dominic, namely, of the aforementioned Order, and accepted by not a few of the people. Christ's faithful, inflamed by these prayers, began immediately to be changed into new men. The darkness of heresy began to be dispelled, and the light of the Catholic Faith to be revealed. Sodalities for this form of prayer began to be instituted in many places by the Friars of the same Order, legitimately deputed to this work by their Superiors, and confreres began to be enrolled together.
2. Following the example of our predecessors, seeing that the Church militant, which God has placed in our hands, in these our times is tossed this way and that by so many heresies, and is grievously troubled troubled and afflicted by so many wars, and by the depraved morals of men, we also raise our eyes, weeping but full of hope, unto that same mountain, whence every aid comes forth, and we encourage and admonish each member of Christ's faithful to do likewise in the Lord.
[Pius goes on to confirm the indults, indulgences, etc., which his predecessors had granted to those who pray the Rosary, and to explicate several of these indulgences.]
Given at Rome at St. Peter's, under the Fisherman's ring, 17 September 1569, in the fourth year of our Pontificate.
We can do no less in our own day. We must pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. We will never know in this passing, mortal vale of tears what seeds will have been planted by our Rosaries as we offer them as the totally consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. We must never look for results as we seek to be faithful each day to our duties in the trenches as soldiers in the Army of Christ to use the spiritual weapon that is Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary. The results will be shown to us in eternity, please God and by the graces that flow to us through the loving hands of Our Lady herself, the Mediatrix of All Graces. That should be enough for us.
As we celebrate the life of the great pope who protected the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from efforts by Catholic innovators to "adapt" its offering to the novelties and abominations introduced by the Protestant revolutionaries, may we use the weapon he, a Dominican, exhorted us to use so that we will not be awash in the muck of the waters of the Potomac, which are the waters of conciliarism itself, as we seek to build up Christendom in our own hearts and souls in cooperation with the graces that Our Lady sends us, thereby planting the seeds for the day when all hearts, consecrated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate of Mary, exclaim:
Vivat Christus Rex!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
