Blame George Walker Bush
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
United States Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) has returned to the party of his youth, the Democratic Party. Specter, of course, is an egregious pro-abort who, among other things, helped to torpedo the nomination of United States Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 1987 and is responsible for giving us the "single bullet theory" in the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963. Specter entered the contest for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party on March 31, 1995, stating as one of his goals to oppose the candidacy of Patrick Joseph Buchanan. Specter's candidacy was short-lived as he withdrew on November 23, 1995, long before Iowa causes (which were held on February 12, 1996) or the New Hampshire primary (which was held on February 20, 1996), endorsing his fellow native of Russell, Kansas, the hapless and ever-inarticulate thirty-degree Mason, Robert Joseph Dole, Jr.
Specter's odyssey from a registered Democrat (1948-1965), who ran for District Attorney of the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1965, to a registered Republican (1965-2009) to a Democrat is reminiscent of other political "conversion" stories, most motivated by rank opportunism, others motivated by principle, still others by the personality quirks of the individuals involved.
The late Wayne Morse was a United States Senator from Oregon from January 3, 1945, to January 3, 1969. He was elected as a Republican in 1944 and re-elected as a Republican in 1950 before resigning from the Republican Party in 1952 to protest retired General Dwight David Eisenhower's selection of United States Senator Richard Milhous Nixon (R-California) as his vice presidential running mate, becoming an "Independent," serving in the United States Senate under that appellation for two years prior to switching to the Democratic Party in 1955 at the behest of the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, United States Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson (D-Texas). Morse won re-election to the United States Senate in 1956 and 1962 before being defeated for a fifth term by the notorious Robert Packwood in 1968. Morse, however, was not a typical party-switcher. One rarely heard Morse's name on radio or television in the 1950s or the 1960s without the adjective "maverick" used to describe his approach to partisan politics. (Morse was one of two United States Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 10, 1964, that authorized then President Lyndon Baines Johnson to escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War in the aftermath of an alleged unprovoked attack on the USS Maddox by North Vietnamese naval gunboats.)
The liberal Republican Mayor of the City of New York, New York, from January 1, 1965, to January 1, 1973, John Vliet Lindsay, announced in 1971 that he was switching to the Democratic Party, which presaged a miserable attempt to secure that party's 1972 presidential nomination. Lindsay actually came in last in the Florida primary in 1972, finishing below a space on the ballot marked "No Preference." That Lindsay even got that far in his career given his failures as Mayor of the City of New York, failures that led directly to the New York City fiscal crisis that prompted an ill-advised Federal "bailout" of the City in 1974 (Lindsay essentially to mortgage the city's future by surrendering to the lavish pension demands made by the city's municipal employees' unions), was somewhat attributable to the fact that the lords of the mass media protected him when he uttered what would be construed as "anti-Semitic" remarks if they had been uttered by, say, a Patrick Buchanan or Bishop Richard Williamson:
There were no buses, taxicabs or delivery vehicles, and no trash or garbage collection for days. “As far as getting to the United Nations is concerned, I may as well be in the Alps,” Dr. Bunche wrote. “This is a shameful performance by the great city of New York, which should certainly condone no second-class borough.”
Mr. Lindsay traveled to Queens, but his visit was not well-received. His limousine could not make its way through Rego Park, and even in a four-wheel-drive truck, he had trouble getting around. In Kew Gardens Hills, the mayor was booed; one woman screamed, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” In Fresh Meadows, a woman told the mayor, “Get away, you bum.”
Mr. Lindsay’s predecessor, Robert F. Wagner, had spent an enormous amount during the last major blizzard, in 1961, but the Lindsay administration was wary of going over budget. And there were rumors that sanitation workers — still angry about the Lindsay administration’s heavy-handed actions during their strike in 1968 — were deliberately ignoring Queens to sabotage the mayor.
Dr. Cannato reveals a fascinating episode. During the mayor’s walk through Fresh Meadows, a woman called him “a wonderful man,” prompting the mayor to respond, “And you’re a wonderful woman, not like those fat Jewish broads up there,” pointing to women in a nearby building who had criticized him.
The comment was recorded on tape, but The New York Times, The Associated Press and WNEW radio declined to run with the story.
“Had the press used this story, John Lindsay’s political career would have been over,” Dr. Cannato wrote, noting that Al Shanker, the powerful head of the teachers’ union, had already raised concerns about Mr. Lindsay’s views toward Jews. (Remembering a Snowstorm That Paralyzed the City - City Room Blog)
There have been, of course, other "political conversion" stories. Here are just a few of the many that come to my mind as a political scientist who has taught numerous courses on political parties and elections and voting behavior:
Dwight Eisenhower was a Democrat before seeking the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1952. Then President Harry S. Truman had encouraged Eisenhower to seek the Democratic Party nomination for president that year.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was a Democrat before becoming a Republican in 1961.
United States Senator Strom Thurmond (South Carolina), a lifelong Democrat (who broke with his party in 1948 to run for president on the "States' Rights" or "Dixiecrat" Party, garnering over a million popular votes and thirty-nine electoral votes), became a Republican on September 16, 1964, remaining in that party until his death on June 26, 2003, five months after his last term in the United States Senate expired.
Phil Gramm, a member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas, switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 1983, immediately resigning from the House of Representatives to run--and win--as a Republican in a special election so as to give his constituents an opportunity to accept or reject his switching parties.
Former United States Senator Lowell Weicker (Connecticut), a lifelong Republican, became an "Independent" in 1990 and won election as the Governor of the State of Connecticut.
United States Senator Richard Shelby (Alabama), switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party on November 9, 1994.
United States Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colorado) switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party on March 3, 1995.
Housewife Carolyn McCarthy, a registered Republican whose husband Dennis was among the six people murdered by gunman Colin Ferguson on a Long Island Rail Road train as it approached the Merillon Avenue station near Garden City Park, New York, on December 7, 1993, became a member of the Democratic Party to run for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1996, which she still holds and uses to support every piece of pro-abortion legislation imaginable.
Michael Forbes, a member of the United States House of Representatives from the First Congressional District in the State of New York, switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party on July 17, 1999, losing a primary in the Democratic Party the next year to retain his seat. Forbes, a Roman Catholic, got pretty hot under the collar when I telephoned one of his aides in 1998 to inquire as to why he had made a contribution of $1,000 to the re-election campaign of the notorious Catholic pro-abort, United States Representative Loretta Sanchez Brixey (D-California). Forbes called me back in a white hot rage. His comments were carried in a report I published in The Wanderer (he said that he supported Sanchez-Brixey's work in behalf of "education;" I told him that he, a Catholic, was enabling the career of a woman who supported the mystical dismemberment of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs).
United States Senator Robert Smith (New Hampshire), a Republican, in a dizzying series of turns in 1999, announced in January of 1999 that he was going to seek his party's presidential nomination for the year 2000, only to drop out of the Republican race and, in a blistering speech delivered on floor of the United States Senate, resigned from the Republican Party in July of 1999 to seek the presidential nomination of the U.S. Taxpayers' Party, which is now the Constitution Party. Smith decided not to pursue the Constitution Party's nomination, which was his for the asking despite the fact that there was going to be a challenge from a Protestant minister named Herb Titus, becoming an "independent" for two months until the death of the pro-abortion Senator John Chafee (R-Rhode Island) opened up the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Sticking his tail firmly between his legs, Smith became a "Republican" again and succeeded Chafee as the chairman on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Although he is completely pro-life, making no "exceptions" to the Fifth Commandment whatsoever (and was one of three senators to vote against the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 1993), Smith endorsed the pro-abortion United States Senator John F. Kerry for president in 2004, resurfacing on the Constitution Party website four years later as the author of a number of editorials.
James Jeffords, a member of the United States Senate from 1989 to 2007 (Vermont), famously switched his party affiliation from Republican to Independent on May 24, 2001, giving the Democratic Party a working majority in the United States Senate for the first time since the beginning of the 104th Congress in 1995.
Self-described "billionaire playboy" Michael Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat, switched to the Republican Party in 2001 in order to run in that party's primary to succeed the term-limited Mayor Rudolph William Giuliani, only to leave the Republican Party on June 19, 2007, to become an "independent."
Mind you, these are some of the party switches that have taken place recently.
Thus it is that Arlen Specter's return to the political party of his youth is not at all that unusual. Specter, a thorough-going supporter of the destruction of innocent preborn babies, is a total creature of political opportunism who saw that he was going to lose in the Republican Party primary in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania next year to the man he barely defeated in a primary in 2004, former United States Representative Patrick Toomey, who is partly pro-life and partly-pro-abortion, making "exceptions" to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment. Political survival is everything to Specter. Everything. What's a switch of papers to insure one's political survival?
Specter's switch, accompanied by the fact that the hideous Al Franken will soon take his places as a United States Senator from the State of Minnesota, will give Caesar Obamus the sixty votes he needs to end any filibusters started by Republicans to try to block the advance of statism, not, you understand, that Republicans have any mind at all to do this given the fact that Caesar Obamus has a sixty-eight percent approval rating according to the latest The New York Times/ CBS News poll, a figure that will be enhanced by the frequent defections on individual Senate votes by Republicans Olympia Snow and Susan Collins (both of Maine). Specter has said that he will not be an "automatic" sixtieth vote for Barack Hussein Obama, talk that is preposterous as Specter knows that he will face a very much unwanted primary in the Democratic Party if he dares to join Republicans in any kind of filibuster at any time for any reason.
This why, you see, I keep quoting my Jewish friends from Long Island, who are wont to say "It's over!" when a new season of the New York Mets begins with their starting pitcher throwing the first pitch of the season for a ball. "It's over!", ladies and gentleman. Caesar Obamus will get whatever it is he wants from a compliant Congress of the United States of America. It is that simple, as I explained yesterday in Why Live in Fear With Saint Joseph So Near? It's over. Caesar Obamus will get whatever is wants from the Congress of the United States of America. It's over/
Obviously, it should have been over for Arlen Specter in 2004. Then Representative Toomey had him on the ropes just prior to the Republican Party primary on April 27, 2004, until the political "mastermind" named Karl Rove determined that Toomey had no chance of winning in a general election and that it would be "better" for the Republican Party for Specter to win the primary and be returned to the United States Senate as a "chastened" man who would be beholden to then President George Walker Bush. Bush, aided by the partly pro-life, partly pro-abortion United States Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania), endorsed Specter over Toomey. Specter's endorsement by Bush and Toomey turned the tide in his favor. Specter defeated Toomey by a margin of 27, 146 votes out of over one million votes cast in the primary (a margin of about 1.7% of the vote).
Yes, sure, some will argue that Specter minded himself during the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Specter's absence from the United States Senate at the start of the 109th Congress in 2005 would have made no difference at all in the confirmation of Roberts and Alito as Republicans would have had fifty-four senators instead of fifty-five. Roberts was confirmed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America by a vote of 78-22 on September 29, 2005, and Alito was confirmed by a vote of 58-42 on January 31, 2006. Arlen Specter's presence in the United States Senate was not, therefore, any factor at all in the confirmation of the legal positivists (men who believe that the words of the Constitution speak for themselves without any advertence to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law) Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
Karl Rove, George Walker Bush's political "mastermind" who is now a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a political analyst for the Fox News Channel (naturalists can always get good paying work!), simply was bereft of any understanding that no one who supports the deliberate, intentional taking of any innocent human life under cover of law is qualified to hold any office of public trust, whether elected or appointed.
Although I have come to recognize that the entire electoral system is a farce and that it is wrong to enable this farce, I did participate in it, sometimes actively as a candidate for public office, for a long time. And it was during my own primary race against then United States Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato's bid for renomination by the Right to Life Party of the State of New York in 1998 that Dr. Charles E. Rice made the following telling points concerning the fact that no one who supports a single abortion under cover of the civil law is worthy to hold any office:
Sen. D'Amato will face a pro-abortion Democratic opponent in the fall. While a voter could morally vote for a pro-abortion candidate who is less objectionable on abortion than his opponent, he should not. The tactic of voting for the less objectionable of two pro-abortion candidates is a tactic of incremental surrender. The incremental strategy of accepting the legalization of abortion in some cases concedes that some innocent human life is negotiable after all. The pro-death movement is a guaranteed winner against an opposition that qualifies its own position by conceding that there are some innocent human beings whom it will allow to be directly and intentionally killed. That approach in practice has mortgaged the pro-life effort to the interests and judgment of what Paul Johnson called "the great human scourge of the 20th century, the professional politician." (Modern Times, 1985, p. 510.)
When a politician says he favors legalized abortion in life of the mother, rape and incest, or other cases, he affirms the nonpersonhood of the unborn child by proposing that he be subjected to execution at the discretion of another. The politician's pro-life rhetoric will be drowned out by the loud and clear message of his position, that he concedes that the law can validly tolerate the intentional killing of innocent human beings. Apart from exceptions, of course, Sen. D'Amato is objectionable as well for some of his other stands on abortion and for his positions on other issues, including especially the homosexual issue.
Pro-lifers could increase their political impact if they were single-issue voters, treating abortion as an absolutely disqualifying issue. Any candidate who believes that the law should treat any innocent human beings as nonpersons by tolerating their execution is unworthy to hold any public office, whether President, trustee of a mosquito abatement district, or senator. (Dr. Charles E. Rice, "Pro-Life Reflections on Sen. D'Amato, The Wanderer, August 27, 1998.)
George Walker Bush and his political wunderkinds believed that those who supported all abortions in all instances were worthy to hold public office of every kind, which is why they had no problem endorsing Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in 2004 and have now lived long enough to see Specter become an open agent in behalf of Caesar Obamus.
This is what I wrote in 2004 in the immediate aftermath of the April 27, 2004, primary between Arlen Specter and Pat Toomey:
The defeat of United States Representative Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) by militant pro-abortion Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) in a Republican Party primary in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, April 27, 2004, has sent many well-meaning people into something of a tizzy. Some people were calling on Catholics to pray and fast for Toomey, who is not completely pro-life, to defeat Specter, who was supported by none other than those "pro-life" stalwarts, President George Walker Bush and Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania). Toomey's defeat by Specter was, however, eminently predictable and demonstrative once again of the utter bankruptcy of the fraud that is the American political system and the trust so many uninformed people continued to place in it.
Indeed, I am absolutely sick and tired, humanly speaking, of having to repeat the points that will be made in this article. It appears as though some Catholics would rather believe in the political equivalent of the tooth fairy than to assess the reality of our situation soberly through the eyes of the actual patrimony of the Catholic Church, crystallized so clearly in the pontificates of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. This, therefore, will be my last effort to repeat points that are so abundantly clear that to repeat them over and over again becomes counterproductive in the face of the hold that the American political and economic systems, founded on decidedly anti-Catholic principles, have on so many believing, practicing Catholics. I will list three basic points that I have discussed ad infinitem in the past before addressing how they apply to our own particular situation. [2009 note: My self-imposed moratorium on writing about electoral matters lasted until after the 2004 general elections.]
First, the modern state is founded on the specific and categorical rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it was exercised by the Catholic Church. Martin Luther himself noted the following: "Assuredly, a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is a Christian, but his function does not concern his religion."
This is the direct antithesis of the spirit of Christendom, exemplified so clearly by Saint Louis IX when he wrote to his son:
Although the ideal was never perfectly realized, most Catholic rulers during the Middle Ages understood that they had to rule according to the mind of Christ as He had revealed It through Holy Mother Church and that there were limits that existed in the Divine positive law and natural law that they could not legitimately transgress. If such rulers proposed to transgress these limits or had indeed done so in fact, they knew that the Church, either in the person of the Supreme Pontiff or a local bishop, could intervene to prevent an unjust action from being taken before the fact or to punish a ruler after the fact for having done so. The Social Kingship of Jesus Christ was the check, although never perfectly exercised, on monarchical absolutism.
Second, the modern state is founded on the acceptance of religious indifferentism as a fact of life, meaning that politics and economics and all other social intercourse were to be conducted without regard to the Deposit of Faith the God-Man entrusted to His true Church. Man is thus consigned to trying to discover some nonexistent "common ground" that can unite him with other men in some sort of inter-denominational or non-denominational spirit of brotherhood, which is nothing other than the essence of Freemasonry. The fruit of this is the belief that man can change the world by the use of his own unaided intellect and the strength of his will, rejecting utterly the necessity of sanctifying grace as the means by which men are strengthened to live in accordance with God's laws as they are explicated by Holy Mother Church. This also leads to atheism as the "lowest common denominator" in social life, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei in 1885.
Third, the rise of political parties in the modern state created the leech known as the professional politician, a man who exists simply to get elected as an ultimate end in and of itself. We now permit ourselves to subordinate the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law to the electoral interests of professional politicians who do not care one whit about the Social Reign of Christ the King, to say nothing of even referring to the Holy Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as the only antidote to the poison of personal sin, which is what is responsible for all of the problems in the world. Quite to the contrary, the professional politician claims he has "solutions" to our problems, thus creating a perverse belief system which contends it has the means to make our lives better and to create peace among nations. This is all illusory.
American politics is an enshrinement of all that is wrong with Modernity. Even believing Catholics have come to accept the fact that it is not expedient to discuss Catholic truth explicitly in the context of public discourse, no less actually work for the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen. Each election cycle issues a new burst of energy and enthusiasm for phony pro-life politicians whose victories are said to be "vital" in order to keep someone "more evil" out of office. The litany of contradictions contained within this subordination of Catholic truth to the exigencies of a false political system elude the grasp of those who do not want to admit that all of their political efforts are illusory and actually help to worsen our situation over the course of time.
One of the standard canards of those who believe that we are going to improve our situation politically is that we have to accept the "lesser of two evils" in the meaningless things known as elections. This canard, invoked so mechanically and mindlessly by its adherents, has permitted the dose of the so-called "lesser evil" to increase more and more with each election cycle. Professional politicians know this, which is why they know they can get away with giving pro-life voters only a few crumbs and some empty, if not contradictory, rhetoric to secure their votes. Even the canard of the "lesser of two evils," though, is stood on its head on occasion when someone alleged to be a friend of the babies, such as President George W. Bush and Senator Rick Santorum, call upon their supporters to listen to their seemingly infallible pronouncements and advice.
To wit, some of the very people who incant the slogan of the "lesser of two evils" voted for the greater of the two evils in the Specter-Toomey race, Arlen Specter, because men in whom they have falsely placed their trust urged them to do so. George W. Bush is not pro-life. He supports abortion in the "hard" cases. He is not pro-life. He is simply less pro-abortion than someone who supports abortion in all circumstances. The same is true of Rick Santorum. If Bush understood the inviolability of all innocent human life, which he does not, then he would not have included a needless "life of the mother" exception in the bill to conditionally ban partial-birth abortions. These two less pro-abortion politicians endorsed Specter, who is completely pro-abortion, choosing to work against a fellow partly pro-life/partly pro-abortion politician, Pat Toomey. If one wants to accept the "lesser of two evils" slogan, then Toomey was the lesser of two evils. Does it not tell you something that two supposedly "pro-life" politicians endorsed a man who is completely pro-abortion?
The Bush-Santorum endorsement of Specter should come as no surprise to anyone. Robert Novak noted in a column in February of 2003 that these two "pro-life" icons were supporting Specter against Pat Toomey, who was attempting to raise funds at the time for his primary race against Specter. This is not news. George W. Bush has raised funds and campaigned for militant pro-abortion Republican politicians such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Governor George Pataki, the now embattled Connecticut Governor John Rowland, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - and a whole host of others. Pro-abortion Catholic Republican Rudolph Giuliani is said to be his party's keynote speaker at its national nominating convention at Madison Square Garden in the City of New York this September.
How can a man, namely, George W. Bush, claim that he is working in behalf of the culture of life and for the day when "every child will be welcomed in life and protected by law" when he works to elect pro-aborts to serve in public office, no less appoints pro-aborts to the highest offices in his own administration? There is a disconnect here, people. Wake up. George W. Bush would not campaign for anyone who was tainted with even a whiff of racial bigotry or hostility to Jewish interests. Why do people like Father Frank Pavone and Austin Ruse and Deal Hudson and the sycophants at the National Right to Life Committee continue to be silent as this president campaigns for pro-aborts and funds contraceptive abortifacients here and around the world? Why have we not heard one word from these influential sources about the introduction of contraception as one of the first things that followed our troops into Afghanistan and Iraq? Are they afraid of losing their White House passes and photo opportunities?
Bush's actions in the Specter-Toomey race are not atypical. He did the same in Texas, even going so far as to sign into law a bill that named a Houston highway after an actual baby-killer. He appointed pro-aborts to every level of the Texas judiciary. I pointed these things out in a number of articles in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in 1999 and 2000. And please do not tell me that Bush just has to do these things. He chooses to do these things. He chose to work against Pat Toomey in the belief that he needs a "moderate" to win the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the November 2, 2004, election against the reprobate known as Senator John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts). It is never permissible to act in a Machiavellian manner. Although God can bring good out of evil, we can never choose to do evil so that a perceived good may come from it. Working in behalf of Arlen Specter was a choice made to cooperate with evil. And there is no other way around it. The silence of those who like their "unprecedented access" to the White House, replete with their White House passes and their egotistic photo opportunities, is reprehensible and misleads ordinary pro-lifers about the actual state of our situation.
As I have noted in other commentaries, to criticize George W. Bush is not to enable John F. Kerry, both of whom are simply two sides of the same Skull and Bones coin. Men such as George W. Bush and Rick Santorum will never be forced to change, however, unless Catholics who believe in the fullness of the Faith criticize them severely for their words and actions that are contrary to the truth (and thus to the common good of the country). Catholics who enable phony pro-life careerist politicians have a grave culpability on their souls for their participation in a cynical political game calculated to achieve only one thing: electoral survival and thus the retention of raw political power.
When are pro-life Catholics going to realize the following:
2) We must think and speak and act as Catholics at all times.
3) No one who supports one abortion under cover of law is pro-life.
4) It is unjust and misleading to call a politician who supports even one abortion under cover of law as being "pro-life."
5) No one who supports contraception and/or funding for same is pro-life or can be called "pro-life."
6) No one who supports explicit instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments (under any of its various guises) and/or funding for same can be called "pro-life."
7) No one who supports "civil unions" while opposing marriages among "perverts" is pro-family or can be called "pro-family."
8) No one who supports a candidate for public office who supports abortion on demand or who is simply less pro-abortion than other candidates is pro-life or is interested in doing anything substantive to restore complete legal protection to all innocent human life from the first moment of fertilization through all subsequent stages until natural death.
Until the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, however, be prepared for "shocks" from professional politicians who claim to be our friends but who are ultimately, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau before them, friends only of the images they see reflected in their mirrors.
That there is even an Arlen Specter in the United States of America to serve as a willing agent of Caesar Obamus in 2009 is the result of the political handiwork of Karl Rove and George Walker Bush and Rick Santorum. One reaps what one sows. Those who sow in the world of realpolitik must reap the bitter fruit of realpolitik. That is, those who are governed only by the corruption of political self-interest will fall by the wayside as others put their self-interest above all else, disregarding past political favors. And thus is realized the description of modern political parties and elections given us by Pope Pius XI in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:
To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives. These political struggles also beget threats of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of government. Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another.
Those whose actions are not informed by the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication must perforce be governed by self-interest and/or a commitment to some naturalistic "philosophy" or "ideology" that is founded wholly or in part on a rejection of a necessity of belief in the Deposit of Faith and a rejection of the necessity that social order is premised upon order in the souls of men, who need to have belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace to be virtuous, no less to scale the heights of sanctity.
Lost on the naturalists who plot their self-defeating electoral strategies according to the "laws" of realpolitik are these words of Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929:
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.)
As I have noted in many recent commentaries, we have fallen into the clutches of statism as a direct result of the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles upon which the modern civil state, including the United States of America, is founded. The counterfeit church of conciliarism has made its "reconciliation" with these principles by endorsing the heresies of "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State," helping to convince Catholics yet attached to its nefarious structures that there is no need to be confessionally Catholic at all times and in all places and to all people, that the prophetic words of Pope Saint Pius X, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, as a simple reiteration of the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church, are "outdated:"
This, nevertheless, is what they ] [the members of the Modernist Sillon] want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.
No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo.
The sacramental sterility and the doctrinal impurity of conciliarism have contributed mightily to the process of deterioration that has been at work in the world as a result of the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry and the plethora of inter-related "philosophies" and "ideologies" of naturalism. There is even tangible, empirical proof of this sterility as the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life has released yet another survey indicating that what passes for "Catholicism" in what we know to be the counterfeit church of conciliarism is on the decline in the United States of America while the numbers those who are "unaffiliated" with any religion are on the rise:
While those Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular religion have seen the greatest growth in numbers as a result of changes in affiliation, Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration. The Landscape Survey finds that among the foreign-born adult population, Catholics outnumber Protestants by nearly a two-to-one margin (46% Catholic vs. 24% Protestant); among native-born Americans, on the other hand, the statistics show that Protestants outnumber Catholics by an even larger margin (55% Protestant vs. 21% Catholic). Immigrants are also disproportionately represented among several world religions in the U.S., including Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Although there are about half as many Catholics in the U.S. as Protestants, the number of Catholics nearly rivals the number of members of evangelical Protestant churches and far exceeds the number of members of both mainline Protestant churches and historically black Protestant churches. The U.S. also includes a significant number of members of the third major branch of global Christianity - Orthodoxy - whose adherents now account for 0.6% of the U.S. adult population. American Christianity also includes sizeable numbers of Mormons (1.7% of the adult population), Jehovah's Witnesses (0.7%) and other Christian groups (0.3%).
Like the other major groups, people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion (16.1%) also exhibit remarkable internal diversity. Although one-quarter of this group consists of those who describe themselves as either atheist or agnostic (1.6% and 2.4% of the adult population overall, respectively), the majority of the unaffiliated population (12.1% of the adult population overall) is made up of people who simply describe their religion as "nothing in particular." This group, in turn, is fairly evenly divided between the "secular unaffiliated," that is, those who say that religion is not important in their lives (6.3% of the adult population), and the "religious unaffiliated," that is, those who say that religion is either somewhat important or very important in their lives (5.8% of the overall adult population). (Statistics on Religion in America Report -- Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.)
Yes, as I keep trying to tell you all out there,
Apostasy Has Consequences.
Pope Leo XIII warned us most specifically in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, that nations founded on the falsehood of religious indifferentism are bound to degenerate to the level of practical atheism over the course of time, warning us also that it is a "grave and fatal error" for nations to exclude the true Church, founded by God, from its national life:
To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.
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.
Yes, it is difficult to "kick against the goad" in the world. It is hard, humanly speaking, for many to realize that we must be confessionally Catholic at all times and in all places and to all people no matter the consequences that might befall us in this passing, mortal vale of tears. However, we must indeed come to accept the simple truth that all will be confusion and chaos and disorder and rot in the lives of individuals and their nations unless each person absent a due subordination to the Deposit of Faith and a due reliance upon the supernatural helps available only in and from the Catholic Church, now found in the catacombs.
It is nevertheless the case, however, that we were taught as children that to be soldiers in the Army of Christ we must indeed run the risk of rejection by others to be faithful to the truths of the Faith. This does not make us, with all of our sins and failings and shortcomings, for which we must be conscious of making reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, one bit better than anyone else. It does, however, make us obliged to persevere in defense of the Faith in the spirit with which the saint we whose glorious life we celebrate today, Saint Catherine of Siena, the Third Order Dominican who was a mystic and a stigmatist, persevered despite fierce opposition, sometimes bordering on mockery, within her own family.
Just consider this brief passage from an account of the life of the saint who lived on nothing other than Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Eucharist for weeks on end and who considered it be a singular privilege to suffer with Him for the sake of souls:
Back home, Catherine began to make penances for the love of Jesus. She began to eat less and less, and to sleep less and less. She spent her nights praying fervently, keeping up straight on the hard floor.
Catherine's parents and relatives were puzzled. Why was she such a strange girl? Why didn't she like fine clothes as the other girls did? Why didn't she want to be admired? Why didn't she like boys? She was entering her teens, and since she was charming and had a winning personality, her relatives thought it was time for her to be married.
But Catherine had vowed her virginity to God at the age of seven; she wished to be only His, and refused to listen to talk of boy friends and marriage.
"Let us put her to doing the housework," her parents decided. "Then she won't be able to spend all her time praying."
So Catherine took care of the house, doing each and every duty well. She was serving God with her hands, while she kept Him in her thoughts and in her heart. Instead of lessening, her thoughts and in her heart. Instead of lessening, her love for Him and union with Him grew. A great resolve was forming within her: she wanted to become a sister.
When her parents found out her hopes, they said, "No." But Catherine did not let that stop her. She kept on begging her mother to let her mother to let her enter the Dominicans, and paid no attention at all when friends told her mother, "Catherine is too pretty to be a sister!"
Too pretty? Would such a human motive come between Catherine and her spiritual desire? "Send me a sickness, my Lord," the girl prayed. Make me ugly, but grant me my desire."
The sickness came, and Catherine's beauty faded. At last she was permitted to enter the Third Order of St. Dominic. As a religious, she continued to live in the world, and went about doing good. Her father let her spend part of the family's income in helping the poor. (Fifty-Seven Saints for Boys and Girls, Daughters of Saint Paul, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 1963, pp. 282-283.)
Mary Fabyan Windeatt had this description of Saint Catherine of Siena's confrontation with her mother about being a Third Order member of the Order of Preachers:
"I want to be a Dominican," she announced. "Not a nun in a convent, but a Dominican Tertiary."
"Why can't you be like other people?" sighed her mother, when she heard the news. Lapa knew that Tertiaries were very holy people, men and women, who wore the habit of a friar or a nun and yet lived in their own homes. Usually they were middle-aged folk, not sixteen-year old girls like Catherine.
Catherine wondered if her mother were going to be angry. "I think God wants me to be a Tertiary, not a nun," she said. "It is really a wonderful thing to be called to be Tertiary, Mother."
Lapa shook her head. "Why do you want to dress like a nun and yet not really be one? Oh, Catherine, you are always causing me trouble! First you must cut off your hair. Then you must live in the worst room in the house. Now you want to go and be a Dominican Tertiary! Oh, dear ! I never had such trouble with my other children!"
"I have promised not to leave my little room," said Catherine. "Please, Mother, go to the Dominican Tertiaries and tell them I want to be a Tertiary, too."
Lapa shrugged her shoulders. "I will not," she said. "I have no use for being different from other people. Besides, the Tertiaries will never have you. They are all older women--widows, too. The would not want to take in a young girl."
"Oh, please go and ask them!" begged Catherine. "If you only knew how much I want to wear the blessed habit of Saint Dominic!"
"There is no arguing about it," said Lapa. "I will not have you in my house, wearing a religious habit and looking like a nun. Don't bother me again."
Catherine knelt down in the middle of the her little room. She was very sad. How could she go to become a Tertiary when she had promised to remain at home to pray for sinners?
"Dearest Saint Dominic, you will have to help me," she said. And then a little of her sadness left her when she offered her disappointment for the conversion of a certain man who had sworn he would never go to church again.
The same year that Catherine was sixteen, a smallpox plague swept through the town. The dyer's young daughter caught the terrible disease and for a time it seemed as though she would die of it. She lay on her hard bed, her face and body covered with sores, her thoughts far away from this world. Poor Lapa was terribly worried.
"Oh, dear! Isn't there something you would like, Catherine? Perhaps I could make you a pudding or something. Or maybe you would like a little fruit . . ."
But Catherine shook her head. "The only thing I want is to be a Dominican Tertiary," she said sadly.
Lapa realized that she could hold out no longer. "All right," she said. "I will go to the woman in charge of the Tertiaries and see what can be done." (Mary Fabyan Windeatt, Saint Catherine of Siena, published originally in 1941 by Sheed and Ward. Republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1993, pp. 32-34.)
Saint Catherine of Siena suffered for the Faith throughout her entire life, including bearing Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's stigmata. Her reputation suffered even after her death as not a few Catholics blamed her for the Great Western Schism, believing that things would have been better if Pope Gregory XI had remained in Avignon, France, rather than returning to the See of Peter in Rome at her insistent behest. Saint Catherine did not care what she had to suffer for the Faith. It should be the same way with us.
We will be hated by relatives and friends and acquaintances for making no concessions to the false religion of conciliarism, which itself makes all manner of concessions to false religions that are hated by God, worship the devil and are thus harmful to souls and to social order and the cause of genuine peace, that of the Divine Redeemer Himself, in the world.
We will be hated for attempting to defend the honor and majesty of God as a prideful Modernist handles with his own priestly hands the symbols of false religions in direct violation of the First Commandment. We will be hated for pointing out the evils of a synthetic "liturgy" that incorporate elements of Protestantism and is designed to propagate a Judeo-Masonic spirit of naturalism by means of the "inculturation of the Gospel." We will be hated for reminding our associates that to attack the very nature of dogmatic truth itself, as Joseph Ratzinger has done throughout the course of his priesthood, is to attack the very nature of God Himself.liic
We will be hated for refusing to participate in a Judeo-Masonic political system that gives us the likes of "pro-lifers" such as George Walker Bush who enable the political careers of those who are completely pro-abortion such as Arlen Specter.
None of this matters, however. Our sins deserve us to be punished by means of humiliation and calumny, among so many other ways. We should consider it a joy to suffer justly for our sins as we attempt to make reparation for them in some small manner as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, especially at those times when we have been given the opportunity to defend the truths of the Faith against the attacks of the fomenters of the novelties of our own day.
No matter the opposition that befalls us, my friends, we must be about the business of planting a few seeds for the restoration for the Social Reign of Christ the King, of making possible the restoration of the Catholic City that was so near and dear to the heart of Pope Saint Pius X.
We help to restore the Catholic City every time we receive Holy Communion worthily in a true offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition by a true bishop or a true priest.
We help to restore the Catholic City as we spend time each day in prayer before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, especially on First Friday into the morning hours of First Saturday.
We help to restore the Catholic City with each Rosary we pray.
We help to restore the Catholic City with each good, sincere, humble, integral Confession we make of our sins.
We help to restore the Catholic City with each blessed Green Scapular we pass out to a lost soul who has been abandoned to the ways of the world by the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
We help to restore the Catholic City by consecrating ourselves to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, offering up all of our prayers and penances and sacrifices and mortifications and humiliations to His Most Sacred Heart through her Immaculate Heart.
We help to restore the Catholic City by enthroning our homes to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
We help to restore the Catholic City by fulfilling Our Lady's Fatima Message in our own lives as best we can.
We help to restore the Catholic City by remembering that this is the time that God has ordained from all eternity for us to live in, seeking therefore to cooperate with the graces 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 flows into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to persevere to the point of our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace as members of the Catholic Church with Perfect Contrition for our sins.
We must, however, make sure that we are in the ark of the Catholic Church, recognizing the simple truth that the apostates and blasphemers who hold offices in the counterfeit church of conciliarism are themselves the enablers of the errors of Modernity and are thus the sworn enemies of the Social Reign of Christ the King. We must have nothing to do with them other than praying most fervently for their conversion back to the true Faith before they die.
Pope Gregory XVI explained in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, that true popes adhere to Catholic teaching without any novelties. So must we:
These and many other serious things, which at present would take too long to list, but which you know well, cause Our intense grief. It is not enough for Us to deplore these innumerable evils unless We strive to uproot them. We take refuge in your faith and call upon your concern for the salvation of the Catholic flock. Your singular prudence and diligent spirit give Us courage and console Us, afflicted as We are with so many trials. We must raise Our voice and attempt all things lest a wild boar from the woods should destroy the vineyard or wolves kill the flock. It is Our duty to lead the flock only to the food which is healthful. In these evil and dangerous times, the shepherds must never neglect their duty; they must never be so overcome by fear that they abandon the sheep. Let them never neglect the flock and become sluggish from idleness and apathy. Therefore, united in spirit, let us promote our common cause, or more truly the cause of God; let our vigilance be one and our effort united against the common enemies.
Indeed you will accomplish this perfectly if, as the duty of your office demands, you attend to yourselves and to doctrine and meditate on these words: "the universal Church is affected by any and every novelty" and the admonition of Pope Agatho: "nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning." Therefore may the unity which is built upon the See of Peter as on a sure foundation stand firm. May it be for all a wall and a security, a safe port, and a treasury of countless blessings. To check the audacity of those who attempt to infringe upon the rights of this Holy See or to sever the union of the churches with the See of Peter, instill in your people a zealous confidence in the papacy and sincere veneration for it. As St. Cyprian wrote: "He who abandons the See of Peter on which the Church was founded, falsely believes himself to be a part of the Church."
When was the last time you heard those who have severed their relationship with the true Church by means of their embrace of one condemned notion after another as they regard with public esteem and respect false religions quote from Pope Saint Agatho on the simple fact that "nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished, nothing changed, nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning"? Not lately, I can assure you. Not lately. It is the conciliar "pontiffs" who have abandoned the See of Peter by changing and adding and diminishing the things appointed by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to His true Church, which is why the forces of Modernity in the world have been able to do their nefarious work with the help of so many Catholics who are attached to the structures of the counterfeit church.
We must defend the Faith, especially by means of our devotion to the daily offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition at the hands of true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism, making sure to spend time in prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament and to pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. Our Lady will have the Triumph of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, and it will be glorious beyond all telling.
We should take consolation in these words of the late Father Maximilian Mary Kolbe:
There are people who do not understand how it can be said that "She [Our Lady] alone has destroyed all heresies in the whole world" when heresies still exist. It is something like this: When during one of the battles, Napoleon was informed that for some unknown reason, the enemy's cavalry was approaching, he said, "The enemy lost the battle" although the battle was still raging. And it turned out to be true. His plan worked. So, and even more so, it is with all heresies. They are already doomed. "The enemy is lost. She won, because she destroyed them." (Father Anselm W. Romb, ed., O.F.M. Conv., The Kolbe Reader, Franciscan Marytown Press, Libertyville, Illinois, 1987, p. 74.)
May it be our privilege to plant a few seeds for the day when the enemies of the Immaculata in the world and the counterfeit church of conciliarism are defeated for all to see as glory is given to the Most Holy Trinity through her Immaculate Heart that was pierced with Seven Swords of Sorrows because of our sins.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
