Barabbas Always Wins

by Thomas A. Droleskey

And Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying: Art thou the king of the Jews? Jesus saith to him: Thou sayest it. And when he was accused by the chief priests and ancients, he answered nothing. Then Pilate saith to him: Dost not thou hear how great testimonies they allege against thee? And he answered him to never a word; so that the governor wondered exceedingly. Now upon the solemn day the governor was accustomed to release to the people one prisoner, whom they would.

And he had then a notorious prisoner, that was called Barabbas. They therefore being gathered together, Pilate said: Whom will you that I release to you, Barabbas, or Jesus that is called Christ? For he knew that for envy they had delivered him. And as he was sitting in the place of judgment, his wife sent to him, saying: Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. But the chief priests and ancients persuaded the people, that they should ask for Barabbas, and take Jesus away.

And the governor answering, said to them: Whether will you of the two to be released unto you? But they said, Barabbas. Pilate saith to them: What shall I do then with Jesus that is called Christ? They say all: Let him be crucified. The governor said to them: Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying: Let him be crucified. And Pilate seeing that he prevailed nothing, but that rather a tumult was made; taking water washed his hands before the people, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it. And the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon us and our children.

Then he released to them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him unto them to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor taking Jesus into the hall, gathered together unto him the whole band; And stripping him, they put a scarlet cloak about him. And platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And bowing the knee before him, they mocked him, saying: Hail, king of the Jews. And spitting upon him, they took the reed, and struck his head.

And after they had mocked him, they took off the cloak from him, and put on him his own garments, and led him away to crucify him. And going out, they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon: him they forced to take up his cross. And they came to the place that is called Golgotha, which is the place of Calvary. And they gave him wine to drink mingled with gall. And when he had tasted, he would not drink. And after they had crucified him, they divided his garments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: They divided my garments among them; and upon my vesture they cast lots. (Matthew 27: 11-15.)

 

Most sadly, the Roman soldiers who mocked Christ the King, Who was their own very King and that of their empire's, have much company today. Indeed, each of us mocks Christ the King when we sin by pride, when we make ourselves the arbiters of moral right and moral wrong, when we think that we do not need the graces that He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, to grow in virtue in this life and to persevere at all times in a state of Sanctifying Grace so as to be ready to meet Him as Our Divine Judge after we have died.

The anti-Incarnational world of Modernity has long mocked Christ the King, doing so as early as the hideous Martin Luther himself, whose bloody revolution against the Divine Plan that He instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church is the proximate source of our social problems today, including the rise of the monster civil state that is the devil's perverse replacement His Social Kingship over men and their nations:

The rending of the Mystical Body by the so-called Reformation movement has resulted in the pendulum swinging from the extreme error of Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism to the opposite extreme error of the Judaeo-Masonic-Communism of Karl Marx.

The uprise of individualism rapidly led to unbridled self-seeking. Law-makers who were arbiters of morality, as heads of the Churches, did not hesitate to favour their own enterprising spirit. The nobles and rich merchants in England, for example, who got possession of the monastery lands, which had maintained the poor, voted the poor laws in order to make the poor a charge on the nation at large. The enclosure of common lands in England and the development of the industrial system are a proof of what private judgment can do when transplanted into the realm of production and distribution. The Lutheran separation of Church from the Ruler and the Citizen shows the decay in the true idea of membership of our Lord's Mystical Body.

"Assuredly," said Luther, "a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion." (As quoted in Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

 

Modernism embraced Martin Luther's heresy of the separation of Church and State upon which which the modern civil state is founded. Pope Saint Pius X recognized this fact as he gave a frank assessment of the heresies and errors of Modernism in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. [According to the Modernists] The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

 

Conciliarism's embrace of "religious liberty" and the "separation of Church and State" places its adherents on the side of Martin Luther and Freemasons and various modern social revolutionaries and Modernism itself as they mock and reject the Social Reign of Christ the King. The twin cornerstones of conciliarism's world view--"religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State"-- were condemned repeatedly on numerous occasions by true pope after true pope prior to the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. This means nothing, of course, to those who have endorsed Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned view of dogmatic teaching and past papal pronouncements as being "conditioned" by the historical circumstances that produced them and are thus in need of "modification" and "reinterpretation" as the conditions in which men themselves change over time.

Thus it is that Catholics around the world, including here in the United States of America, believe that there is some kind of naturalistic or inter-denominational or non-denominational way to "solve" social problems that have as their remote root cause Original Sin and as their proximate root causes the Actual Sins of us all. Catholics choose "Barabbas, "whether of the false opposite of the naturalist "right" or of the naturalist "left," to lead them into the "promised land" of national security and economic prosperity at home.

No thought is given to how much naturalism is responsible for the rise of a social structures and a "popular culture" that is oriented to the "here and now" without any regard for man's First Cause and Last End.

No thought is given to the simple fact that our social conditions worsen no matter who gets elected in the biennial and quadrennial farce of partisan politics.

No thought is given to the simple fact that social conditions must continue to worsen and the power of the civil state will continue to grow the more that men sin unrepentantly.

No thought is given to the simple fact that nations whose civil laws enshrine the commission of grievous sins under cover of law and whose popular culture glorifies such sins must be punished by God for their wanton violations of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law that mock His Sovereignty over the whole of creation, including, yes, believe it or not, the United States of America, the supposed land of the "free" that has engaged in war after war to spread the American way of sin and idolatry around the globe.

As happens during every presidential election cycle, ordinary human beings get caught up in the utter irrationality of campaigns, closing their eyes to harsh realities, especially the hash reality that the likely Republican Barabbas this year, Willard Mitt Romney, gave the currently reigning Barabbas in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama, the basic outline of ObamaCare in his own RomneyCare, including the so-called "individual mandate" that might be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States of America three months from now.

It's all a farce, especially when one considers that the currently reigning Barabbas, the one who is considered as the "secular savior" by so many of the false opposite of the "left," is seeing a rise in his poll numbers in "swing" states such as Ohio.

No, no.

Never mind manipulated unemployment statistics.

Never mind the threats to legitimate liberties as the power, size and scope of the Federal government have increased in the past three years.

Never mind the attacks on the Catholic Faith that have been waged by the current administration.

Never mind the bowing and scraping to foreign leaders and the continued surrender of American national sovereignty.

Never mind the refusal to enforce immigration laws and to defend the borders of the United States of America.

Never mind the politics of demagoguery and race-baiting that Caesar Barackus Obamas Ignoramus has waged relentlessly.

Never mind the nearly five billion dollar increase in the size of the national debt and annual budget deficits of over a trillion dollars for Fiscal Year 2012.

Never mind the worldwide promotion of the chemical and surgical assassination of innocent preborn children.

Never mind Attorney General Eric Holder's stonewalling on the Fast and Furious gun-running program.

Never mind Barack Hussein Obama's demonizing of his opponents.

Never mind the usurpation of powers belonging to the Congress of the United States of America that flagrantly violate the Constitution of the United States of America and arrogate unto unelected bureaucrats control over the lives of ordinary citizens.

Never mind the welter of lies told by Obama and his administration's officials.

No, never mind any of this.

Barack Hussein Obama remains personally popular with large numbers of people. And the man who just installed a "car elevator" at one of his homes, the one located in La Jolla, California, a man who has supported "gay rights" and chemical and surgical baby-killing and who did not seek re-election as Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 2006 because he knew that he was going to be defeated, Willard Mitt Romney, is going to be chewed alive as he stands for nothing, representing once again the mode of Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., and John Sidney McCain III. Those who standing for nothing are always going to be defeated by the likes of committed ideologues who consider it as pretty inconsequential to accuse opponents of the worst kinds of motives when all they want to do is get elected and continue most of his own policies.

In the midst of all this, my good and very few readers, who chooses for Christ the King? No, "Barabbas" is chosen time and time again in the belief that we have to make a few "compromises" in order to "get ahead" and "stop evil."

Hello out there in television land, how did we "get ahead" in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush or George Walker Bush? How did the "compromises" made in 1996 thwart the re-election of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton?

How did the compromises made in 2008 thwart the election of Barack Hussein Obama, who was made electable by the polices of George Walker Bush, who only defeated Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., in 2000 because 97,000 committed leftists voted for Ralph Nader rather than Gore in the State of Florida, thereby giving Bush the Sunshine State's electoral college votes and the presidency?

The unwillingness of believing Catholics to understand, no less accept, the truth that all forms of naturalism actually represent nothing other than the same sort of "liberation" from the hated Roman persecutors that Barabbas, an insurrectionist, promised to the people of Judea. Part of this unwillingness is caused by the paucity of Sanctifying and Actual Graces in the world as a result of the sacramental barrenness of the liturgical rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that most Catholics in the world who bother to go their local parish at all think represent Catholic worship. The blindness produced by this paucity of grace in the world is part and parcel of the overall effect of the combination of the anti-Incarnational forces of Modernity and Modernism. We live in a world of barbarism amongst supposedly "free" peoples, who are content to let the civil state grow in power as sin proliferates in their own lives, spent as many of them are in an endless succession of bread and circuses.

We are looking at what happens in a world where most people, including most baptized Catholics, are devoid of contact with the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as Father Frederick Faber made this exact point in The Precious Blood:

 

It is plain that some millions of sins in a day are hindered by the Precious Blood; and this is not merely a hindering of so many individual sins, but it is an immense check upon the momentum of sin. It is also a weakening of habits of sin, and a diminution of the consequences of sin. If then, the action of the Precious Blood were withdrawn from the world, sins would not only increase incalculably in number, but the tyranny of sin would be fearfully augmented, and it would spread among a greater number of people. It would wax so bold that no one would be secure from the sins of others. It would be a constant warfare, or an intolerable vigilance, to preserve property and rights. Falsehood would become so universal as to dissolve society; and the homes of domestic life would be turned into wards either of a prison or a madhouse. We cannot be in the company of an atrocious criminal without some feeling of uneasiness and fear. We should not like to be left alone with him, even if his chains were not unfastened. But without the Precious Blood, such men would abound in the world. They might even become the majority. We know of ourselves, from glimpses God has once or twice given us in life, what incredible possibilities of wickedness we have in our souls. Civilization increases these possibilities. Education multiplies and magnifies our powers of sinning. Refinement adds a fresh malignity. Men would thus become more diabolically and unmixedly bad, until at last earth would be a hell on this side of the grave. There would also doubtless be new kinds of sins and worse kinds. Education would provide the novelty, and refinement would carry it into the region of the unnatural. All highly-refined and luxurious developments of heathenism have fearfully illustrated this truth. A wicked barbarian is like a beast. His savage passions are violent but intermitting, and his necessities of sin do not appear to grow. Their circle is limited. But a highly-educated sinner, without the restraints of religion, is like a demon. His sins are less confined to himself. They involve others in their misery. They require others to be offered as it were in sacrifice to them. Moreover, education, considered simply as an intellectual cultivation, propagates sin, and makes it more universal.

The increase of sin, without the prospects which the faith lays open to us, must lead to an increase of despair, and to an increase of it upon a gigantic scale. With despair must come rage, madness, violence, tumult, and bloodshed. Yet from what quarter could we expect relief in this tremendous suffering? We should be imprisoned in our own planet. The blue sky above us would be but a dungeon-roof. The greensward beneath our feet would truly be the slab of our future tomb. Without the Precious Blood there is no intercourse between heaven and earth. Prayer would be useless. Our hapless lot would be irremediable. It has always seemed to me that it will be one of the terrible things in hell, that there are no motives for patience there. We cannot make the best of it. Why should we endure it? Endurance is an effort for a time; but this woe is eternal. Perhaps vicissitudes of agony might be a kind of field for patience. But there are no such vicissitudes. Why should we endure, then? Simply because we must; and yet in eternal things this is not a sort of necessity which supplies a reasonable ground for patience. So in this imaginary world of rampant sin there would be no motives for patience. For death would be our only seeming relief; and that is only seeming, for death is any thin but an eternal sleep. Our impatience would become frenzy; and if our constitutions were strong enough to prevent the frenzy from issuing in downright madness, it would grow into hatred of God, which is perhaps already less uncommon than we suppose.

An earth, from off which all sense of justice had perished, would indeed be the most disconsolate of homes. The antediluvian earth exhibits only a tendency that way; and the same is true of the worst forms of heathenism. The Precious Blood was always there. Unnamed, unknown, and unsuspected, the Blood of Jesus has alleviated every manifestation of evil which there has ever been just as it is alleviating at this hour the punishments of hell. What would be our own individual case on such a blighted earth as this? All our struggles to be better would be simply hopeless. There would be no reason why we should not give ourselves up to that kind of enjoyment which our corruption does substantially find in sin. The gratification of our appetites is something; and that lies on one side, while on the other side there is absolutely nothing. But we should have the worm of conscience already, even though the flames of hell might yet be some years distant. To feel that we are fools, and yet lack the strength to be wiser--is not this precisely the maddening thing in madness? Yet it would be our normal state under the reproaches of conscience, in a world where there was no Precious Blood. Whatever relics of moral good we might retain about us would add most sensibly to our wretchedness. Good people, if there were any, would be, as St. Paul speaks, of all men the most miserable; for they would be drawn away from the enjoyment of this world, or have their enjoyment of it abated by a sense of guilt and shame; and there would be no other world to aim at or to work for. To lessen the intensity of our hell without abridging its eternity would hardly be a cogent motive, when the temptations of sin and the allurements of sense are so vivid and strong.

What sort of love could there be, when we could have no respect? Even if flesh and blood made us love each other, what a separation death would be! We should commit our dead to the ground without a hope. Husband and wife would part with the fearfullest certainties of a reunion more terrible than their separation. Mothers would long to look upon their little ones in the arms of death, because their lot would be less woeful than if they lived to offend God with their developed reason and intelligent will. The sweetest feelings of our nature would become unnatural, and the most honorable ties be dishonored. Our best instincts would lead us into our worst dangers. Our hearts would have to learn to beat another way, in order to avoid the dismal consequences which our affections would bring upon ourselves and others. But it is needless to go further into these harrowing details. The world of the heart, without the Precious Blood, and with an intellectual knowledge of God, and his punishments of sin, is too fearful a picture to be drawn with minute fidelity.

But how would it fare with the poor in such a world? They are God's chosen portion upon the earth. He chose poverty himself, when he came to us. He has left the poor in his place, and they are never to fail from the earth, but to be his representatives there until the doom. But, if it were not for the Precious Blood, would any one love them? Would any one have a devotion to them, and dedicate his life to merciful ingenuities to alleviate their lot? If the stream of almsgiving is so insufficient now, what would it be then? There would be no softening of the heart by grace; there would be no admission of of the obligation to give away in alms a definite portion of our incomes; there would be no desire to expiate sin by munificence to the needy for the love of God. The gospel makes men's hearts large;and yet even under the gospel the fountain of almsgiving flows scantily and uncertainly. There would be no religious orders devoting themselves with skilful concentration to different acts of spiritual and corporal mercy. Vocation is a blossom to be found only in the gardens of the Precious Blood. But all this is only negative, only an absence of God. Matters would go much further in such a world as we are imagining.

Even in countries professing to be Christian, and at least in possession of the knowledge of the gospel, the poor grow to be an intolerable burden to the rich. They have to be supported by compulsory taxes; and they are in other ways a continual subject of irritated and impatient legislation. Nevertheless, it is due to the Precious Blood that the principle of supporting them is acknowledged. From what we read in heathen history--even the history of nations renowned for political wisdom, for philosophical speculation, and for literary and artistic refinement--it would not be extravagant for us to conclude that, if the circumstances of a country were such as to make the numbers of the poor dangerous to the rich, the rich would not scruple to destroy them, while it was yet in their power to do so. Just as men have had in France and England to war down bears and wolves, so would the rich war down the poor, whose clamorous misery and excited despair should threaten them in the enjoyment of their power and their possessions. The numbers of the poor would be thinned by murder, until it should be safe for their masters to reduce them into slavery. The survivors would lead the lives of convicts or of beasts. History, I repeat, shows us that this is by no means an extravagant supposition.

Such would be the condition of the world without the Precious Blood. As generations succeeded each other, original sin would go on developing those inexhaustible malignant powers which come from the almost infinite character of evil. Sin would work earth into hell. Men would become devils, devils to others and to themselves. Every thing which makes life tolerable, which counteracts any evil, which softens any harshness, which sweetens any bitterness, which causes the machinery of society to work smoothly, or which consoles any sadness--is simply due to the Precious Blood of Jesus, in heathen as well as in Christian lands. It changes the whole position of an offending creation to its Creator. It changes, if we may dare in such a matter to speak of change, the aspect of God's immutable perfections toward his human children. It does not work merely in a spiritual sphere. It is not only prolific in temporal blessings, but it is the veritable cause of all temporal blessings whatsoever. We are all of us every moment sensibly enjoying the benignant influence of the Precious Blood. Yet who thinks of all this? Why is the goodness of God so hidden, so imperceptible, so unsuspected? Perhaps because it is so universal and so excessive, that we should hardly be free agents if it pressed sensibly upon us always. God's goodness is at once the most public of all his attributes, and at the same time the most secret. Has life a sweeter task than to seek it, and to find it out?

Men would be far more happy, if they separated religion less violently from other things. It is both unwise and unloving to put religion into a place by itself, and mark it off with an untrue distinctness from what we call worldly and unspiritual things. Of course there is a distinction, and a most important one, between them; yet it is easy to make this distinction too rigid and to carry it too far. Thus we often attribute to nature what is only due to grace; and we put out of sight the manner and degree in which the blessed majesty of the Incarnation affects all created things. But this mistake is forever robbing us of hundreds of motives for loving Jesus. We know how unspeakably much we owe to him; but we do not see all that it is not much we owe him, but all, simply and absolutely all. We pass through times and places in life, hardly recognizing how the sweetness of Jesus is sweetening the air around us and penetrating natural things with supernatural blessings.

Hence it comes to pass that men make too much of natural goodness. They think too highly of human progress. They exaggerate the moralizing powers of civilization and refinement, which, apart from grace, are simply tyrannies of the few over the many, or of the public over the individual soul. Meanwhile they underrate the corrupting capabilities of sin, and attribute to unassisted nature many excellences which it only catches, as it were by the infection, by the proximity of grace, or by contagion, from the touch of the Church. Even in religious and ecclesiastical matters they incline to measure progress, or test vigor, by other standards rather than that of holiness. These men will consider the foregoing picture of the world without the Precious Blood as overdrawn and too darkly shaded. They do not believe in the intense malignity of man when drifted from God, and still less are they inclined to grant that cultivation and refinement only intensify still further this malignity. They admit the superior excellence of Christian charity; but they also think highly of natural philanthropy. But has this philanthropy ever been found where the indirect influences of the true religion, whether Jewish or Christian, had not penetrated? We may admire the Greeks for their exquisite refinement, and the Romans for the wisdom of their political moderation. Yet look at the position of children, of servants, of slaves, and of the poor, under both these systems, and see if, while extreme refinement only pushed sin to an extremity of foulness, the same exquisite culture did not also lead to a social cruelty and an individual selfishness which made life unbearable to the masses. Philanthropy is but a theft from the gospel, or rather a shadow, not a substance, and as unhelpful as shadows are want to be. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, published originally in England in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 53-59.)

 

Father Faber noted in his The Precious Blood is characterized by the Pelagian spirit of human self-redemption and the libertinage that flows forth as a result merely from the pull of the world, which is so strong and very difficult for so many to resist in these days of apostasy and betrayal:

All devotions have their characteristics; all of them have their own theological meanings. We must say something, therefore, upon the characteristics of the devotion to the Precious Blood. In reality the whole Treatise has more or less illustrated this matter. But something still remains to be said, and something will bear to be repeated. We will take the last first. Devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotional expression of the prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul is the apostle of redeeming grace. A devout study of his epistles would be our deliverance from most of the errors of the day. He is truly the apostle of all ages. To each age doubtless he seems to have a special mission. Certainly his mission to our is very special. The very air we breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel shapes of an old Pelagianism. The spirit of the world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it comes to pass that wrong theories among us are always constructed round a nuclear of Pelagianism; and Pelagianism is just the heresy which is least able to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is the age of the natural as opposed to the supernatural, of the acquired as opposed to the infused, of the active as opposed to the passive. This is what I said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat. Now, this exclusive fondness for the natural is on the whole very captivating. It takes with the young, because it saves thought. It does not explain difficulties; but it lessens the number of difficulties to be explained. It takes with the idle; it dispenses from slowness and research. It takes with the unimaginative, because it withdraws just the very element in religion which teases them. It takes with the worldly, because it subtracts the enthusiasm from piety and the sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with the controversial, because it is a short road and a shallow ford. It forms a school of thought which, while it admits that we have an abundance of grace, intimates that we are not much better for it. It merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes the sovereignty of God odious by representing it as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all its ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devotion to the Precious Blood.

The time is also one of libertinage; and a time of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical logic, one of infidelity. Whatever brings out God's side in creation, and magnifies his incessant supernatural operation in it, is the controversy which infidelity can least withstand. Now, the devotion to the Precious Blood does this in a very remarkable way. It shows that the true significance in every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, written in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 258-259.)

People will always be choosing Barabbas, preferring never even think about praying for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King as long as they continue to delude themselves into thinking that the pluralistic civil state of Modernity is a "good" thing after all.

The late Louis-Edouard-François-Desiré Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, France, put the matter as follows in the Nineteenth Century:

Neither in His Person," Card, Pie said in a celebrated pastoral instruction, "nor in the exercise of His rights, can Jesus Christ be divided, dissolved, split up; in Him the distinction of natures and operations can never be separated or opposed; the divine cannot be incompatible to the human, nor the human to the divine. On the contrary, it is the peace, the drawing together, the reconciliation; it is the very character of union which has made the two things one: 'He is our peace, Who hat made both one." (Eph. 2:14). This is why St. John told us: 'every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and is now already in the world' (1 John 4:3; cf. also 1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John: 7). "So then, Card. Pie continues, "when I hear certain talk being spread around, certain pithy statements (i.e., 'Separation of Church and State,' for one, and the enigmatic axiom 'A free Church in a free State,' for another) prevailing from day to day, and which are being introduced into the heart of societies, the dissolvent by which the world must perish, I utter this cry of alarm: Beware the Antichrist." (Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, pp. 21-23.)

 

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, a day when the crowds in Jerusalem greeted Our Blessed Lord and Saviour as a King. Most of those who shouted Hosanna to the Son of David on Palm Sunday were crying out for His Crucifixion and for the release of Barabbas five days later. Can it be this way with us? Can it? Why can't we recognize once and for all that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ must reign as King over men and their nations and that all "compromises" with this truth are from the devil?

We must always be champions of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen as we make reparation for the blasphemous rejection of Our King's Social Reign over men and their nations by the conciliar "popes" and their confederates, mindful of our need to make reparation for our own sins of pride, for our own refusal to let Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to reign as the King over every single aspect of our hearts and souls without any exception whatsoever.

Concentrating first and foremost on our own souls and getting ourselves to Sacrament of Penance on a weekly basis, if possible, especially during this coming Holy Week, may we call upon Our Lady, Mary Immaculate, to recover by penance what we have lost by sin, seeking freely to lift high the Cross, which is the one and only standard of true human liberty, inviting all men to keep her company at the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of that same Cross in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permit.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, 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.

See also: A Litany of Saints