Barabbas Wins Again

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Barabbas wins again! Barabbas wins just as he did on Good Friday:

And so Pilate being willing to satisfy the people, released to them Barabbas, and delivered up Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified. (Mark 15: 15)

Yes, each time we sin we are crying out "Give us Barabbas!" Unlike the Jews on Good Friday, most of whom did not repent of serving as our agents in choosing Barabbas to be released from the clutches of Pontius Pilate instead of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, believing Catholic are truly sorry for each of their sins and seek to do penance after they have been Absolved at the hands of a true priest acting in persona Christi as an alter Christus in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. Believing Catholics realize the horror of their own personal sins, understanding that they imposed unspeakable torture on Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and caused those Seven Swords of Sorrow to be thrust through and through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Just consider Father Frederick Faber's description of the Fifth Dolor of Our Lady, the Crucifixion and Death of her Divine Son:

Such was the fifth dolor, with its creative periods of sanctity and sorrow. She [Our Lady] had stood through it all, notwithstanding the agonizing yesterday, the sleepless night, the long morning crowded with its terrible phenomena. In the strength of her unfailing weariness she had stood through it all, and Scripture is careful to mark the posture, as if this miracle of endurance was of itself a reward for her dolor, that we cannot preach Christ Crucified unless Mary be in sight. It is something else we preach--not that--unless she be standing there. And now she stands on Calvary alone. It is three hours past noon of the most awful day the world shall ever see.

Something still remains to be said of the peculiarities of this dolor, notwithstanding that so much has been unavoidably anticipated in the narrative. Above all things, the Crucifixion has this peculiarity, that it was the original fountain of all the other dolors, except the third. That stands apart. It is Mary's own Crucifixion, her Gethsemane and her Calvary. But the two dolors which came out of the Infancy, and the four which represent the Passion, have the Crucifixion for their centre. The Three Days' loss does not belong to the Infancy, and the shadow of the Passion is no more thrown over it than it was over the whole life of Mary. It was the act of Jesus Himself, which seemingly had an especial relation to His Mother. The third dolor, which prefaces the Eighteen Years at Nazareth, was to her sorrows what the Eighteen Years were to her life generally, something between Jesus and herself, a mystery of a different sphere from those in which both He and she were concerned in the fulfillment of the world's redemption. But the sword in Simeon's prophecy was the Crucifixion. The Flight into Egypt was to hinder the cruelty of Herod from anticipating the moment of our Saviour's death. The Meeting with the Cross was the road to Calvary. The Taking down from the Cross and the Burial were sorrows which flowed naturally out of the Crucifixion, and were in unbroken unity with it. The Crucifixion was therefore the realization of her lifelong woe. The fountain was reached. She had tracked it up to Calvary. What remained was the waste water, or rather the water and blood, which flowed down from the mount, and sank in at the threshold of the Garden Tomb. Compared with the Crucifixion, the other dolors, the third always excepted, were almost reliefs and distinctions stirring in the fixed depths of her unfathomable woe. The Crucifixion was a sorrow by itself, without name or likeness. It was the centre of the system of her dolors, while the independence of her third dolor betokens the existence of that vast world which Mary is in her own self, a creation apart, brighter than this world of ours, and more dear to Jesus. It is a mysterious orb allowed to come in sight of this other system, where we are,--a disclosure of all that world of phenomena which is hidden from our eyes in the Eighteen Years, during which Jesus devoted Himself to her. It ranks with the Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation, and the Assumption, all which belong to Mary's world, and would have been even if sin had not been, though they would have been different from what they were. But that third dolor shows how the fallen world of sin and the necessity of a passible Incarnation told on her world, as it did on His, and passed upon the lineaments of the Maternity as well as upon those of the Incarnation. There are certainly few mysteries in the gospel which we understand less than the Three Days' Loss.

Another peculiarity of the Crucifixion is the length of time during which the tide of suffering remained at its highest point without any sign of ebbing. The mysteries, which filled the three hours, seem too diversified for us to regard them, at least till we come to the Dereliction, as rising from less to greater in any graduated scale. They are rather separate elevations, of unequal height, standing linked together like a mountain-chain. But the lowest of them was so immensely high that it produced most immeasurable agony in her soul. The anguish of death is momentary. The length of some of the most terrific operations which can rack the human frame seldom exceeds a quarter of an hour. Pain pushed beyond a certain limit, as in medieval torture, is instantaneous death. In human punishments which are not meant to kill, the hand of science keeps watch on the pulse of the sufferer. But to Mary the Crucifixion was three hours, three long hours, of mortal agony, comprising hundreds of types and shapes of torture, each one of them intolerable in itself, each pushed beyond the limits of human endurance unless supported by miracle, and each of them kept at that superhuman pitch for all that length of time. When pain comes we wish to lie down unless madness and delirium come with it, or we are fain to run about, to writhe, gesticulate, and groan. Mary stood upright on her feet the whole while, leaning on no one, and not so much as an audible sigh accompanied her silent tears. It is difficult to take this thought in. We can only take it in by prayer, not by hearing or reading.

It was also a peculiarity of the Crucifixion that it was a heroic trial of her incomparable faith. Pretty nearly the faith of the whole world was in her when she stood, with John and Magdalen, at the foot of the Cross. There was hardly a particle of her belief which was not tried to the uttermost in that amazing scene. Naturally speaking, our Lord's Divinity was never so obscured. Supernaturally speaking, it was never so manifest. Could it be possible that the Incarnate Word should be subject to the excesses of such unparalleled indignities? Was the light within Him never to gleam out once? Was the Wisdom of the Father to be with blasphemous ridicule muffled in a white sack, and pulled about in absurd, undignified helplessness by the buffooning guards of an incestuous king? Was there not a point, or rather were there not many points, in the Passion, when the limit of what was venerable and fitting was overstepped? even in the reserved narrative of the Gospels, how many things there are which the mind cannot dwell on without being shocked and repulsed, as well as astonished! Even at this distance of time do they not try our faith by their very horror, make our blood run cold by their murderous atrocity, and tempt our devotion to withdraw, sick and fastidious, from the affectionate contemplation of the very prodigies of disgraceful cruelty, by which our own secret sins and shames were with such public shame most lovingly expiated? Is not devotion to the Passion to this day the touchstone of feeble faith, of lukewarm love, and of all self-indulgent penance? And Mary, more delicate and fastidious far than we, drank all these things with her eyes, and understood the horror of them in her soul, as we can never understand it. Think what faith was hers. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 259-262.)

 

Believing Catholics do not take sin lightly. They do not make fun of sin. They do not seek to make excuses for their sins. They detest and despise each of their sins. They understand that man's relationship to God was ruptured as a result of the Original Sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and that our spiritual adoption as His sons and daughters took place only as a result of His Divine Son's Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross that paid back the debt that we owed Him for our sins, making it possible for us to have an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise if we persist until the points of our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace.

Most of the people with whom we associate, whether in our families or our work places or our neighborhoods, do not understand the horror of sin. This is partly the work of the pull of the culture, which, as 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:

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.)

 

Obviously, another contributing reason for the fact that most of the people with whom we associate do not understand the horror of sin is that they are steeped in unrepentant sin themselves. Some of our dearest relatives are utterly unaware of how they, objectively speaking, are offending God and bringing ruin and unhappiness on themselves in this life and quite possibly for all eternity if they do not repent of their sins before they die by, at least minimally, making a Perfect Act of Contrition for them.

Fallen human nature inclines us to sin. Persisting in a state of Mortal Sin unrepentantly inclines us to sin all the more. These are simple truths. So simple, of course, that many men, steeped in the complexity wrought of their own disordered pride and the blindness of intellect engendered by their unforgiven sins, cannot accept them, preferring to believe in fables that reaffirm them in their own lives of sin.

Some of the fables that reaffirm men in their own sins today are being promoted by "archbishops" and "bishops" and "priests' in the structure of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Many of these "prelates" and "presbyters" who preside over invalid--and thus barren--sacramental rites--have lost the Faith entirely and some of them are themselves steeped in the worst kind of perversity imaginable, which is why they seek to minimize, if not entirely deny, the horror of personal sin and, in the case of "Archbishop" Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, Germany, and "Abbot" Mark Patrick Hederman in Ireland, deny outright that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died for our sins, retaining their full "canonical standing" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism nevertheless. (See They Like It!)

Although "Archbishop" Zollitsch and "Abbot" Hederman have made headlines by denying that Our Lord died for our sins, they are far, far from alone in the "official" quarters of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who believe this blasphemous heresy that strikes at the heart of the Catholic Faith. Why is there a need for the Church to exist if Adam's sin did not cause the human race to fall from a state of Original Innocence and into one of Original Sin, prompting God the Father out of an act of pure, gratuitous love for His rational creatures to send His Co-Eternal and Co-Equal Son to become Incarnate in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of  God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation so as to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross? To deny that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died for our sins is to deny there is any personal sin in need of atonement, which is the same thing as saying that one can live their lives in states of unrepentant sin without jeopardizing their eternal happiness in Heaven. That many, many "teachers" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism believe this and teach this quite openly in their classrooms contributes mightily to enabling others to choose to live in sin themselves, thereby multiplying disorder within individual souls and disorder, chaos and violence within society itself.

The prophecy of Our Lady at LaSalette, France, to Maximim Giraud and Melanie Calvat on September 19, 1846, has come true before our very eyes:

"Priests, my Son's ministers, priests, by their evil life, by their irreverences and their impiety in celebrating the holy mysteries, love of money, love of honor and pleasures, priests have become sewers of impurity. Yes, priests call forth vengeance, and vengeance is suspended over their heads. Woe to priests, and to persons consecrated to God, who by their infidelities and their evil life are crucifying my son anew! The sins of persons consecrated to God cry to heaven and call for vengeance, and now here is vengeance at their very doors, for no longer is anyone found to beg mercy and pardon for the people; there are no more generous souls, there is now no one worthy of offering the spotless Victim to the Eternal on the worlds behalf.

"God will strike in an unparalleled manner. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! God will exhaust His anger, and no one will be able to escape so many evils at once. The heads, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has darkened their minds; they have become those wandering stars which the ancient devil will drag with his tail to destruction. God will permit the ancient serpent to sow divisions among rulers, in all societies and in all families; both physical and moral punishments will be suffered. God will abandon men to themselves and will send chastisements one after the other for over 35 years. (The Message of Our Lady of La Salette)

 

Sewers of impurity. That was true in the Nineteenth Century. It is true now as many of the the priests and presbyters and "bishops" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism pollute doctrine and liturgy because they have polluted themselves with the poisons of unrepentant personal sin. Those who are steeped in unrepentant personal sin must either take the path of Martin Luther by claiming that they are "forgiven" without reforming their lives or they must take the path of rationalists and naturalists and pantheists who deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and/or deny that the mission entrusted to Him by His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father was to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

It is no wonder, you see, that there is quite an aggressive "push" being made at the present time to promote the "legalization" of "marriage" between persons of the same gender who are steeped in unrepentant acts of perversity. Catholic public officials, such as New York Governor David Paterson and United States Senator Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who believes that Proposition 8, passed by the voters of California on November 4, 2008, and others, can feel free to promote legislation to "legalize" "marriages" among those steeped in perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments because many, although certainly not all, Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have lost any concept at all of the horror of personal sin.

Why be concerned about the fact that United States Senator John Sidney McCain III's former presidential campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, has given an address to the "Log Cabin Republicans" urging the not-so "grand old party" to endorse "marriages" between people steeped in perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments (Steve Schmidt's Address to the Log Cabin Republicans) or that McCain's own daughter, Meghan McCain, gave a speech (Meghan McCain's Speech) to that same "Log Cabin Republicans" group in which she gave them encouragement as members of the Republican Party? In other words, why be concerned about the fact that both Steve Schmidt and Meghan McCain served as accessories to the sins of others by means of counsel, flattery and by defense of the evil done? None of this matters in our "modern" world, right?

Wrong.

Sin matters. It matters to me. It matters to you. It matters to everyone. The more that unrepentant sin abounds in the world is the more the nations will be awash with violence within their borders and will conflict with others outside of those borders.

No one can say that he loves God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church and persist in sin unrepentantly as to do so is to make warfare against God and against the good of one's own immortal soul. How can one say that he loves God when he offends him wantonly and unrepentantly by means of personal sin and at the same time shows that he has contempt for his own soul, which has been made in the image and likeness of the Most Holy Trinity and redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross? 

No one who truly loves Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself through His true Church can denigrate the reality of the horror of personal sin, which wounds His Mystical Body, the Church Militant on earth, today, and fills His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart with new sorrows, as she told Maximim Giraud and Melanie Calvat at LaSalette, France, on September 19, 1846, and as she and her Divine Son told Sister Lucia dos Santos in Pontevedra, Spain, in 1925:

By 1925 Lucia, who was now 18, had become a postulant with the Sisters of St. Dorothy at Pontevedra in Spain, and on Thursday 10 December, the Blessed Virgin, accompanied by the Child Jesus on a little cloud, appeared to her in her cell. Lucia recounted that Mary rested her hand on her shoulder, while showing her a heart encircled by thorns in her other hand.

The Child Jesus spoke first: "Have pity on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother. It is covered with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation."

Then Mary said:"My daughter, look at My Heart surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console me, and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months go to confession and receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary and keep me company for a quarter of an hour while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me." (Mary's words at Fatima.)

 

Yet it is, of course, that most Catholics attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism do not realize the horror of personal sin, either in themselves or as it is promoted under cover of the civil law and in every aspect of popular culture. The absence of sensus Catholicus is such, my friends, that the simple truths of the Faith concerning the evil of perverse sins against nature enumerated below seem foreign, not actually "uncharitable," in the eyes of many, many Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism:

1) God's love for us is an act of His divine will, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of our immortal souls.

2) Our love for others must be premised on willing for them what God wills for us: their salvation.

3) We love no one authentically if we do or say anything, either by omission or commission, which reaffirms him in a life of unrepentant sin.

4) God hates sin. He wills the sinner to repent of his sins by cooperating with the graces He won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

5) One of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to admonish the sinner. We have an obligation to admonish those who are in lives on unrepentant sin to turn away from their lives of sin and to strive to pursue the heights of sanctity.

6) God has compassion on all erring sinners, meaning each one of us. He understands our weakness. He exhorts us, as He exhorted the woman caught in adultery, to "Go, and commit this sin no more."

7) It is not an act of "love" for people to persist in unrepentant sins with others.

8) It is not an act of "judgmentalness" or "intolerance" to exhort people who are living lives of unrepentant sin to reform their lives lest their souls wind up in Hell for eternity.

9) Mortal Sins cast out Sanctifying Grace from the soul. Those steeped in unrepentant Mortal Sin are the captives of the devil until they make a good and sincere Confession.

9) Certain sins cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Sodomy is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

10) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments do not "love" the individuals with whom they are sinning. Authentic love cannot exist in a soul committed to a life against the Commandments of God and the eternal welfare of one's own soul, no less the souls of others.

11) Those enraged in natural unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments have no right to "marry:" or to be accorded "civil union" status that that has the equivalent "benefits" of marriage:

When we consider the great excellence of chaste wedlock, Venerable Brethren, it appears all the more regrettable that particularly in our day we should witness this divine institution often scorned and on every side degraded.

For now, alas, not secretly nor under cover, but openly, with all sense of shame put aside, now by word again by writings, by theatrical productions of every kind, by romantic fiction, by amorous and frivolous novels, by cinematographs portraying in vivid scene, in addresses broadcast by radio telephony, in short by all the inventions of modern science, the sanctity of marriage is trampled upon and derided; divorce, adultery, all the basest vices either are extolled or at least are depicted in such colors as to appear to be free of all reproach and infamy. Books are not lacking which dare to pronounce themselves as scientific but which in truth are merely coated with a veneer of science in order that they may the more easily insinuate their ideas. The doctrines defended in these are offered for sale as the productions of modern genius, of that genius namely, which, anxious only for truth, is considered to have emancipated itself from all those old-fashioned and immature opinions of the ancients; and to the number of these antiquated opinions they relegate the traditional doctrine of Christian marriage.

These thoughts are instilled into men of every class, rich and poor, masters and workers, lettered and unlettered, married and single, the godly and godless, old and young, but for these last, as easiest prey, the worst snares are laid.

Not all the sponsors of these new doctrines are carried to the extremes of unbridled lust; there are those who, striving as it were to ride a middle course, believe nevertheless that something should be conceded in our times as regards certain precepts of the divine and natural law. But these likewise, more or less wittingly, are emissaries of the great enemy who is ever seeking to sow cockle among the wheat. We, therefore, whom the Father has appointed over His field, We who are bound by Our most holy office to take care lest the good seed be choked by the weeds, believe it fitting to apply to Ourselves the most grave words of the Holy Ghost with which the Apostle Paul exhorted his beloved Timothy: "Be thou vigilant . . . Fulfill thy ministry . . . Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine."

And since, in order that the deceits of the enemy may be avoided, it is necessary first of all that they be laid bare; since much is to be gained by denouncing these fallacies for the sake of the unwary, even though We prefer not to name these iniquities "as becometh saints," yet for the welfare of souls We cannot remain altogether silent.

To begin at the very source of these evils, their basic principle lies in this, that matrimony is repeatedly declared to be not instituted by the Author of nature nor raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a true sacrament, but invented by man. Some confidently assert that they have found no evidence of the existence of matrimony in nature or in her laws, but regard it merely as the means of producing life and of gratifying in one way or another a vehement impulse; on the other hand, others recognize that certain beginnings or, as it were, seeds of true wedlock are found in the nature of man since, unless men were bound together by some form of permanent tie, the dignity of husband and wife or the natural end of propagating and rearing the offspring would not receive satisfactory provision. At the same time they maintain that in all beyond this germinal idea matrimony, through various concurrent causes, is invented solely by the mind of man, established solely by his will.

How grievously all these err and how shamelessly they leave the ways of honesty is already evident from what we have set forth here regarding the origin and nature of wedlock, its purposes and the good inherent in it. The evil of this teaching is plainly seen from the consequences which its advocates deduce from it, namely, that the laws, institutions and customs by which wedlock is governed, since they take their origin solely from the will of man, are subject entirely to him, hence can and must be founded, changed and abrogated according to human caprice and the shifting circumstances of human affairs; that the generative power which is grounded in nature itself is more sacred and has wider range than matrimony -- hence it may be exercised both outside as well as within the confines of wedlock, and though the purpose of matrimony be set aside, as though to suggest that the license of a base fornicating woman should enjoy the same rights as the chaste motherhood of a lawfully wedded wife.

Armed with these principles, some men go so far as to concoct new species of unions, suited, as they say, to the present temper of men and the times, which various new forms of matrimony they presume to label "temporary," "experimental," and "companionate." These offer all the indulgence of matrimony and its rights without, however, the indissoluble bond, and without offspring, unless later the parties alter their cohabitation into a matrimony in the full sense of the law.

Indeed there are some who desire and insist that these practices be legitimatized by the law or, at least, excused by their general acceptance among the people. They do not seem even to suspect that these proposals partake of nothing of the modern "culture" in which they glory so much, but are simply hateful abominations which beyond all question reduce our truly cultured nations to the barbarous standards of savage peoples. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

 

12) Those engaged in natural  or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are not fit to adopt children.

13) Those engaged in natural or unnatural acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are not fit to adopt children because their very sinful lives put into jeopardy the eternal of the souls of the children they seek to adopt. It is not possible for people who are sinning unrepentantly to teach children to hate sin as God hates sin. They are immersed in sin. Pope Pius XI put it this way in Casti Connubii, 1930:

But Christian parents must also understand that they are destined not only to propagate and preserve the human race on earth, indeed not only to educate any kind of worshippers of the true God, but children who are to become members of the Church of Christ, to raise up fellow-citizens of the Saints, and members of God's household, that the worshippers of God and Our Savior may daily increase.

14) Those engaged in unnatural, perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are further unfit to adopt children because they have no right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to live together as a "couple."  Once again, Pope Pius XI's Casti Connubii:

Nor must We omit to remark, in fine, that since the duty entrusted to parents for the good of their children is of such high dignity and of such great importance, every use of the faculty given by God for the procreation of new life is the right and the privilege of the married state alone, by the law of God and of nature, and must be confined absolutely within the sacred limits of that state.

14) Those engaged in unnatural, perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment have no right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to present a "model" of "marriage" or "parenthood" that is only from the devil himself. The words that Saint Paul wrote about perversity in Rome in his own day are quite apropos of our own:

Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use against which is their nature.

And in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.

And as they liked not to  have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.

Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.  (Romans 1: 24-32)

15) Matrimony was elevated to a Sacrament by Our Lord at the wedding feast in Cana. The Holy Sacrament of Matrimony is entered into by one man and by one woman to achieve these ends: the procreation and education of children, the mutual good of the spouses, a remedy for concupiscence. Pope Pius XI noted this in Casti Connubii:

This conjugal faith, however, which is most aptly called by St. Augustine the "faith of chastity" blooms more freely, more beautifully and more nobly, when it is rooted in that more excellent soil, the love of husband and wife which pervades all the duties of married life and holds pride of place in Christian marriage. For matrimonial faith demands that husband and wife be joined in an especially holy and pure love, not as adulterers love each other, but as Christ loved the Church. This precept the Apostle laid down when he said: "Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church," that Church which of a truth He embraced with a boundless love not for the sake of His own advantage, but seeking only the good of His Spouse.] The love, then, of which We are speaking is not that based on the passing lust of the moment nor does it consist in pleasing words only, but in the deep attachment of the heart which is expressed in action, since love is proved by deeds. This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love toward God and their neighbor, on which indeed "dependeth the whole Law and the Prophets." For all men of every condition, in whatever honorable walk of life they may be, can and ought to imitate that most perfect example of holiness placed before man by God, namely Christ Our Lord, and by God's grace to arrive at the summit of perfection, as is proved by the example set us of many saints.

This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.

 

How many Catholics today, especially those attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism, understand or accept these truths? Sadder still, how many of those who do understand these truths recognize that there is no naturalistic, secular, religiously indifferentist, political. philosophical, ideological, inter-denominational or non-denominational way to retard the promote of the social evils that been protected under cover of the civil law thus far and whose scope is being expanded to include other evils in the name of "tolerance, "diversity, "justice," "compassion," "charity" and "coexistence.

Catholics must understand that Catholicism is the one and only path to personal and social order and that is therefore impossible to pursue the common temporal good, which must be undertaken in light of man's Last End, by the promotion of things that are repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

 

We must oppose the evils of the day as Catholics, understanding that it is God's Holy Will for every man and every nation on the face of this earth to be shaped by the Catholic Faith, something that the late Father Denis Fahey, the ardent foe of Judeo-Masonic naturalism, explained in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

Papal documents, treating of the Mystical Body in relation to Politics and Economics, as well as those which deal with the influence of the saints, the truly great men of the world, on their times, are of paramount importance for the study of the theology of history. The Syllabus and the various condemnations of Liberalism by the Sovereign Pontiffs aimed at fixing certain truths firmly in the minds of Catholics. The return to sane thinking about social organization demanded as a prerequisite the purification of thought and the elimination of error.

We can thus easily see that the entrance of Christianity into the world has meant two things. Primarily and principally, it has meant the constitution of a supernatural society, the Mystical Body of Christ, absolutely transcending every natural development of culture and civilization. Secondly, it has had for result that this supernatural society, the Catholic Church, began to exercise a profound influence on culture and civilization and modified in far-reaching fashion the existing temporal or natural social order.

The proper organization of society is thus dependent upon the due submission of rulers and the ruled to the authority of the Catholic Church, something that occurred, albeit imperfectly and inconsistently, in the Middle Ages:

In proportion as the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind, political and economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, endowed, as she is, with the right of intervention in temporal affairs whenever necessary, because of her participation in the spiritual Kingship of Christ. Thus the natural or temporal common good of States came to be sought in a manner calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ, and social life came more and more fully under the influence of the supreme end of man, the vision of God in Three Divine Persons.

Accordingly, Catholic Social Order, viewed as a whole, is not primarily the political and social organization of society. It is primarily the supernatural social organism of the Church, and then, secondarily, the temporal or natural social order resulting from the influence of Catholic doctrine on politics and economics and from the embodiment of that influence in social institutions. If instead of Catholic Social Order we use the wider but more convenient expression of Kingdom of God, we may say that the Kingdom of God on earth is in its essence the Church, but, in its integrity, comprises the Church and the temporal social order which the influence of the Church upon the world is every striving to bring into existence. Needless to say, while the general principles of social order remain always the same, social structures will present great differences at different epochs. No particular temporal social order will ever realize all that the Church is capable of giving to the world. The theology of history must include, then, primarily, the study of the foundation and development of the Church, and secondarily, the examination of the ebb and flow of the world’s acceptance of the Church’s supernatural mission.

As noted before there is no Protestant or Judeo-Masonic or naturalistic way to organize civil society, which must keep in man's Last End, something that can be understood only as it taught by the Magisterium of Catholic Church and whose pursuit is enabled by her Sanctifying Office. Father Fahey explained this in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

Politics is the science which as for object the organization of the State in view of the complete common good of the citizens in the natural order, and the means that conduce to it. As the final end of man is, however, not merely natural, the State, charged with the temporal social order, must ever act so as not only not to hinder but also to favour the attaining of man’s supreme end, the Vision of God in Three Divine Persons. Political thought and political action, therefore, in an ordered State, will respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, the divinely-instituted guardian of the moral order, remember that what is morally wrong cannot be politically good. Thus the natural or temporal common good of the State will be always aimed at, in the way best calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ. The civil power will then have a purer and higher notion of its proper end, acquired in the full light of Catholic truth, and political action, both in rulers and ruled, will come fully under the influence of supernatural life.”

 

A world that rejects the Divine Plan that God Himself had instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church will be filled with wanton violence and a descent into the abyss of barbarism that so characterizes life in the so-called "civilized" United States of America, where over four thousand innocent preborn babies are butchered under cover of law every day, where physicians prescribe and pharmacists dispense contraceptive pills and devices, thereby denying the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity of martial relations and killing, in most cases, the innocent preborn, a land where usury, which is specifically condemned by the Catholic Church as one of the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, is the basis of corporate wealth, a land where every sort of immorality and indecency is displayed publicly and promoted in every aspect of popular culture, exported abroad for the sake of corporate wealth and cultural imperialism. This is, of course, but the logical, inexorable consequence of the rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church as the one and only teacher and sanctifier of men--and thus the one and only force on the face of this earth to remonstrate with civil rulers to do nothing contrary to the good of souls.

A nation not founded on right principles was bound to demonstrate the perfection of the inherent degeneracy of its falsehoods over time. It was American Masons who helped to undermine Catholicism in Latin America, permitting the demonic lodges to gain their footholds in various countries, including Mexico, which belongs in a special way to Our Lady, and the subsequent persecution of Catholics that had the imprimatur of the likes of President Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt made war upon Catholics in the Philippines who did not want their Protestant and Masonic "liberators" to rule their country and thus to introduce false worship (either of the Protestant or Masonic variety) into their proudly Catholic land. This is the legacy of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King: unbridled licentiousness and the violence and greed that is unleashed thereby.

The United States of America has been in the business of promoting the falsehoods of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry and capitalism and civil and religious liberty and pluralism across the world. Any nation that promotes these evils has a great debt to pay to God, Who may indeed be preparing to visit quite a chastisement on it for its persistence in so many abominable evils while it dares to call itself "civilized," if not "the last best hope of mankind," an appellation that belongs to the Catholic Church alone, universally and eternally

Barabbas will continue to "win" as along as men are steeped in their unrepentant sins and as long as those who are perceived, albeit erroneously, to be the "leaders" of the Catholic Church can reaffirm people in their own personal sins by denying that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was made Incarnate so as to die on the Cross in atonement for our sins. The twin, inter-related errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism have produced a situation where most people, including most Catholics, choose Barabbas all of the time, going to their graves having a "grand old time" without having a clue as to the horror of personal sin and how we must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world until the moment we draw our dying breaths.

Let us make sure to use the weapon that was lifted high by the great foe of Modernism, Saint Pius X, throughout his priesthood, Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, as we seek to eradicate sin from all our own lives, making use of the Sacred Tribunal of Penance on a weekly basis and spending time before Our Lady's Divine Son in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. We must never doubt the fact that Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph.

Let us use the spiritual weapons that Our Lord has given us through His Most Blessed Mother, understanding these words that Saint Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Ephesians apply to us right now in our current ecclesiastical and civil circumstances:

Not serving to the eye, as it were pleasing men, but, as the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart, With a good will serving, as to the Lord, and not to men. Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond, or free. And you, masters, do the same things to them, forbearing threatenings, knowing that the Lord both of them and you is in heaven; and there is no respect of persons with him. Finally, brethren, be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of his power.

Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace:

In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints: (Ephesians 6: 6-18.)

 

Omnia instaurare in Christo.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our deaths. Amen.

 

Alleluia! He is Risen!

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

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.

Saint George, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints