Bound To Come To This Point

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Most people have very short memories, especially for the details of current events. So many images bombard the eyes and sounds bombard the ears that the events of even one day are like a blur in the minds of so many people. The devil uses cacophony to confuse and bewilder the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross, hoping to mire them in lives of unrepentant sin and/or despondency in this life so as to snatch them into Hell for all eternity. Simple logic and the truth of cold, hard facts are rejected by most people, caught up as they are in the "rush" of images and sounds that they permit to assault them so endlessly during almost all of their waking hours.

Reflection? Study? Quiet? Silence? Not for the average American. Turn on the radio in the car instead of praying the Rosary. Turn on the television at home instead of reading about the lives of the saints or studying about the Church's authentic Social Teaching. Do something. Be active. The mania for activity and the revulsion at the thought of quietude are two of the fundamental curses of the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferent and semi-Pelagian ethos of Americanism. This makes it almost impossible, at least humanly speaking, for the average American, including for most Catholics no matter where they fall across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide, to think about First and Last Things, to remind themselves that every problem in the world has remote and proximate causes, that the only way to ameliorate social problems is for individuals to be converted on a daily basis away from their sins and to live more fully in accord with the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church.

Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics and Contributed to the Rise of Conciliarism summarizes simple truths that have been forgotten by older Catholics or have never been taught to those Catholics who have been educated in the wake of the conciliar revolution. Suffice it to say for present purposes that all of the problems of the world, bar none, are caused remotely by Original Sin and proximately by our own Actual Sins. There is absolutely no naturalistic, secular, religiously indifferentist, nondenominational, interdenominational, philosophical, ideological or other "programmatic" way by which to "resolve" or ameliorate these social problems. Most Catholics do not understand or accept this simple truth, trapped as they are by the apostasy of Americanism that has convinced them that it is possible for there to be a well-ordered society without a firm reliance upon the Catholic Faith by each citizen and that it is possible for citizens to be virtuous without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace.

A bit of background, provided in numerous articles on this site, will be useful to review once again.

The devil used Protestantism in many ways to spread his poisons far and wide, first by raising up a bloody revolution against the Faith and thus the Social Reign of Christ the King in Europe. Many thousands of Catholics were killed in this bloody revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself has instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church and to order things in the temporal realm in light of man's Last End. This bloody revolution saw over 72,000 people, fully three percent of the population of England at the time, were killed under orders issued by King Henry VIII between 1534 and 1547 because they remained faithful to the Catholic Church and did not recognize his bogus "authority" as the "supreme head of the church in England." Thousands more were killed or starved to death in Ireland. Many were the martyrs killed by those hateful people known as Calvinists, that dark, sinister "religion" that is so much responsible for the abject lies of Americanism, in what is now Switzerland and The Netherlands.

Ah, you see, the devil used this blood lust that he had unleashed to lay yet another trap for persecution-weary Catholics seeking some refuge from oppression in various parts of Europe, especially in the British Isles. Having raised up bloodthirsty Protestants in Europe, the devil used the apparent "tolerance" of "nice" Protestants and "enlightened" Freemasons to lure Catholics in the nascent United States of America into thinking that the mere fact that they were less persecuted here than their ancestors had been in Europe would make it possible for them to practice the Faith openly and for It to spread without too much interference being posed by the civil state. This was--and remains--the trap of the heresy of religious liberty that the devil knew would lure Catholics to sleep as they were catechized by the various lies of naturalism and pluralism into eventually viewing the Church through the lens of "democracy" and egalitarianism and majoritarianism rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith.

This infection, although apparent from the very beginnings of the United States of America, was very manifest by the end of the Nineteenth Century. So manifest in fact that that Pope Leo XIII, writing in his Apostolical Letter, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22 1899, to James Cardinal Gibbons, the longtime Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, clearly saw the danger and noted it as such:

But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world  (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22 1899.)

 

The Americanist bishops and priests of the late-Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries lit the fire that would lead to the conflagration known as the "Second" Vatican Council. Americanism's accommodations to the "virtues" of the religiously indifferentist modern civil state were meant to be spread throughout the world, as Monsignor Henri Delassus noted when writing of the views of Americanism's chief apologist, Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, and his proteges in the American hierarchy:

American Catholicism" is not, in the thought of is promoters, a way of thinking and of practicing Catholicism solely in the contingent and changing things that would be common to the United States, in accordance with the particular conditions that are found on American soil. If this had been so, we would not have believed it incumbent upon us to be concerned with it.

No, their pretension is to speak to the entire universe: "The ear of the world is open to our thinking, if we know what to say to them," Msgr. [Bishop of Richmond, John] Keane had written to the Congress of Brussels. And in fact they are speaking, and their word has not been without echo upon each part of France. If, at least, they had not put into the ear of the world anything other than what the Church leaves to our free discussion; but, no, as we shall see, we shall come to understand that their words are more or less imposed upon that which belongs to the very fundamentals of the Catholic faith.

The Abbot Klein had said in the preface he gave to The Life of Fr. Hecker: "His [Fr. Hecker's] unique and original work is to have shown the profound harmonies joining the new state of the human spirit to the true Christianity." "The American ideas that he recommended are, he knew, those which GOD wanted all civilized people of our time to be at home with  ..."

"The times are solemn," Msgr. Ireland had said, in his discourse, The Church and the Age. "At such an epoch of history ... the desire to know is intense ... The ambition of the spirit, fired up by the marvelous success in every field of human knowledge ... The human heart lets itself go to the strangest ideals ... Something new! Such is the ordered word of humanity, and to renew all things is its firm resolution.

"The moment is opportune for men of talent and character among the children of the Church of God. Today the routine of old times is dead;  today the ordinary means lead to the decrepitude of the aged; the crisis demands something new, something extraordinary; and it is upon this condition that the Church shall record the greatest of victories in the greatest of historical ages" (Discourse given in the Cathedral of Baltimore, October 18, 1893, on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Episcopal consecration of Cardinal Gibbons.) (Monsignor Henri Delassus, Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, available from Catholic Action Resource Center, pp. 9-10.)

 

Pope Leo XIII was most explicit in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae in warning about the long term dangers of Americanism. He had already warned the American bishops in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, that they were not making known the Social Teaching of the Church that he had been explicating in one encyclical letter after another, thereby depriving the sheep entrusted unto their pastoral care from even recognizing that they had an obligation to plant the seeds for the conversion of the nation to the true Faith, that it was not correct for the Church and State in the United States of America to be dissevered and divorced:

The main factor, no doubt, in bringing things into this happy state were the ordinances and decrees of your synods, especially of those which in more recent times were convened and confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See. But, moreover (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge), thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. . . .  (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

As regards civil affairs, experience has shown how important it is that the citizens should be upright and virtuous. In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied with the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs. On this whole subject there are to be found, as you know, in the encyclical letters written by Us from time to time in the course of Our pontificate, many things which Catholics should attend to and observe. In these writings and expositions We have treated of human liberty, of the chief Christian duties, of civil government, and of the Christian constitution of States, drawing Our principles as well from the teaching of the Gospels as from reason. They, then, who wish to be good citizens and discharge their duties faithfully may readily learn from Our Letters the ideal of an upright life. In like manner, let the priests be persistent in keeping before the minds of the people the enactments of the Third Council of Baltimore, particularly those which inculcate the virtue of temperance, the frequent use of the sacraments and the observance of the just laws and institutions of the Republic. (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22 1899.)

 

Pope Leo XIII was warning the likes of John Ireland, the arch-Americanist Bishop and Archbishop of Saint Paul from 1884 to 1918, that the growth of the Catholic Church in the United States of America was not the result of the "free exercise of religion" clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America but of the graces won for us on Calvary 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. "Religious liberty" as enshrined in the Constitution of the United States of America was not the reason that the Catholic Church had experienced such growth. God Himself was responsible for effecting this growth in spite of, not because of, the "dissevered and divorced" status of the Church from the civil state in the United States of America.

Ah, the shallow group of intellectually dishonest people who have defected from the Faith by embracing the tenets of the condemned heresy of Americanism do not provide their readers with the full context of those opening quotes from Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, choosing to stop right at the sentences highlighted in bold above. This misleads readers into drawing the conclusion that true popes gave their unquestioned support to the nature of the American constitutional regime. This is not so.

It is important to make some careful distinctions when discussing the heresy of Americanism:

First, the Catholic Church's condemnation of the heresy of Americanism has nothing to do with whether the conditions extant in the thirteen English colonies situated alongside the eastern seaboard of what became the United States of America justified a revolt from the authority of King George III. This is a matter about which the Church has nothing to say. Arguments could be made in support of a revolt. Arguments could be made against such a revolt. It is interesting to note, however, that only about a third of the colonists supported a break from the United Kingdom in 1776 and that many of those who did not support the revolt were harassed rather mercilessly by the self-styled "patriots" (gee, where have we seen this phenomenon lately?). The Americanist heresy, however, has nothing to do with a debate over whether the conditions of a justified revolt, which are more or less synonymous with the tenets of the Theory of the Just War, existed in the thirteen English colonies in what became the United States of America.

Second, the Catholic Church's condemnation of the heresy of American has nothing to do with the specific institutional arrangements created by the Constitution of the United States of America. Holy Mother Church has taught from time immemorial that she can adapt herself to any legitimate form of government provided that she be recognized as the true Church and that she be accorded the ultimate right, following the discharge of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, to interpose herself, albeit rarely and judiciously, with the civil authorities when the good of souls demands her motherly intervention. Holy Mother Church, however, has no specific models of government to which men must adhere. She can adapt herself to a monarchy or to a presidential-congressional or parliamentary-ministerial form or to some other sort of government.

So many Americanists emote about these red herrings that have nothing to do with Americanism at all. Those who want to continue to emote can do so. Those who want to understand why Americanism is a heresy can continue to read this article.

What is at issue in the Americanist heresy are the false principles upon which the American founding were premised and how those false principles adversely influence the minds, hearts and souls of Catholics in the United States of America to view the Church through the eyes of the world rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith. These false principles have convinced generations upon generations of Catholics in the United States of America to look to partisan politics as the means (at first) for their upward mobility in American society and then as the means by which social problems can be resolved, usually by means of the massive expansion of the size and power of all levels of government (Federal, state and local) in full violation of the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity and by the use of the confiscatory taxing power of the civil state. Having been convinced of the basic compatibility of pluralist paradigm with the Faith, Catholics of a "leftist" bent consider the Democrat Party to be the true secular "church," outside of which there can be no secular "salvation."

Caught up in this diabolical trap, however, Catholics of a "rightist" bent believe that the statism and social evils promoted by the Democrat Party can be retarded, at least to a certain extent, by the Republican Party, thereby boxing themselves into a naturalistic prison from which there is absolutely no escape. There will always be some Democrat Party boogeyman from the 'left" to make the latest agent of Judeo-Masonic naturalism of the "right" in the Republican Party look "better" by comparison. Alas, as I will keep repeating until the day I die or until I lose the ability to speak and write, whichever shall first occur, that the devil wins no matter who wins a particular election. And no one can be forced to do the devil's bidding. There is no moral obligation to be an agent in the advancement of the devil's agenda of naturalism, whether by rapid or more incremental means.

It is rather well known that I carry no brief for the naturalists of the Republican Party, most of whom are simply less pro-abortion than those who support unrestricted baby-killing at all times under cover of law. However, let the record show for those who have short memories that a good deal of my teaching and writing career has been spent in open and frequent criticism of those Catholics in public life who cleave to the "leftist" agenda of naturalism advanced by the Democrat Party. I won no friends at a Brooklyn Catholic Charities Congress on Saturday, May 7, 1983, when I noted during my presentation that the most pressing matter of social justice facing the United States of America, the daily slaughter of the preborn, was not at all to be seen on that day's agenda. And I certainly did my teaching career no good whatsoever by running for lieutenant governor of the State of New York in 1986 on the Right to Life Party line, speaking out very loudly about the apostasies of one Mario Matthew Cuomo, then the Governor of New York, nor did I do myself any temporal favors by writing scores upon scores of articles against William Jefferson Blythe Clinton from 1992 to 2001.

(The following articles were written during or in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Democratic Party National Convention: Lest We Forget, Fact and Fiction, Memo to Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Their Conciliar Enablers, Perseverance and Hope in All of the Wrong Things.)

My opposition to all forms of naturalism extends, therefore, equally and without reserve to the agents of death, both physical and eternal, and statism in the Democrat Party without for one second indemnifying their like-minded brethren in the false opposite known as the Republican Party. No one but absolutely one can claim that he "loves" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ while supporting even one, solitary instance in which He is mystically sliced and diced under cover of the civil law in the persons of innocent preborn human beings, no less those who support His mystical destruction under cover of law without any restrictions whatsoever. Let me repeat this for the sake of any Catholic who is bold enough to support any pro-abort candidate for public office, including the pro-abort reprobate named Barack Hussein Obama: no one can claim that he "loves" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ while supporting His mystical dismemberment in the persons of preborn children in their mothers' wombs under cover of law. It is impossible to pursue any form of "social justice" or to realize any sort of "peace" among nations as long as men make war upon the Divine Redeemer by means of unrepentant sins, including the four sins (willful murder, the sin of Sodom, defrauding a widow, withholding the day laborer's wages), and especially by the sin of baby-killing, whether by chemical or surgical means, under cover of law.

No Catholic can support baby-killing under cover of law and/or support those for public office who support such killing and be a member of the Catholic Church in good standing. It is that simple, and any Catholic who supported Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., betrayed the Catholic Faith even though they believed this egregious pro-abort and statist was a "different" kind of Democrat, one who was not "pro-abortion" but "pro-choice," as though the latter term is nothing other than a euphemism to mask the reality of what happens when a women chooses to "terminate her pregnancy: the brutal execution of her innocent child. .

Some of the lefties who supported Obama in 2008 and who supported the passage of ObamaCare, the nationalization of the American health care industry, are now aghast--aghast, mind you--that their champion's administration is requiring employees of what appears to be the Catholic Church and its institutions here in the United States of America to be provided coverage for contraception and other "family planning services" lest their employers be fined draconian sums of money daily:

When Barack Obama secured his party's nomination for president in 2008, one group of Democrats had special reason to cheer.

These were Democrats who were reliably liberal on policy but horrified by the party's sometimes knee-jerk animosity to faith. The low point may have been the 1992 Democratic convention. There the liberal but pro-life governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Sr., was humiliated when he was denied a speaking slot while a pro-choice Republican activist from his home state was allowed.

With Mr. Obama, all this looked to be in the past. In 2006, the Illinois senator delivered a speech declaring that "secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square." He followed up by appearing at fund-raisers for the anti-abortion Bob Casey Jr. during Mr. Casey's successful run for Sen. Rick Santorum's senate seat.

Sen. Casey went on to co-chair Mr. Obama's National Catholic Advisory Council. Sixteen years after the snub to his dad, he was given a prime-time speaking slot at the 2008 Democratic convention. And Mr. Obama would go on to capture a majority of the Catholic vote.

Now, suddenly, we have headlines about the president's "war on the Catholic Church." Mostly they stem from a Health and Human Services mandate that forces every employer to provide employees with health coverage that not only covers birth control and sterilization, but makes them free. Predictably, the move has drawn fire from the Catholic bishops.

Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover. In a post for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters minces few words. Under the headline "J'ACCUSE," he rightly takes the president to the woodshed for the politics of the decision, for the substance, and for how "shamefully" it treats "those Catholics who went out on a limb" for him.

The message Mr. Obama is sending, says Mr. Winters, is "that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our Church has built over the years to be Catholic in ways that are important to us."

Mr. Winters is not alone. The liberal Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, blogged that he "cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience"—and he urged people to fight it. Another liberal favorite, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., has raised the specter of "civil disobedience" and vowed that he will drop coverage for diocesan workers rather than comply. They are joined in their expressions of discontent by the leaders of Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, which alone employs 70,000 people.

In the run-up to the ruling, the president of Notre Dame, the Rev. John Jenkins, suggested a modest compromise by which the president could have avoided most of this strife. That would have been by allowing the traditional exemption for religious organizations. That's the same understanding two of the president's own appointees to the Supreme Court just reaffirmed in a 9-0 ruling that recognized a faith-based school's First Amendment right to choose its own ministers without government interference, regardless of antidiscrimination law.

A few years ago Father Jenkins took enormous grief when he invited President Obama to speak at a Notre Dame commencement; now Father Jenkins finds himself publicly disapproving of an "unnecessary government intervention" that puts many organizations such as his in an "untenable position."

Here's just part of what he means by "untenable": Were Notre Dame to drop coverage for its 5,229 employees, the HHS penalty alone would amount to $10 million each year.

The irony, of course, is that the ruling is being imposed by a Catholic Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, working in an administration with a Catholic vice president, Joe Biden. A few years back the voluble Mr. Biden famously threatened to "shove my rosary beads" down the throat of those who dared suggest that his party's positions on social issues put it at odds with people of faith. Does he now mean to include Mr. Winters, Cardinal Mahony and Father Jenkins?

Catholic liberals appreciate that this HHS decision is more than a return to the hostility that sent so many Catholic Democrats fleeing to the Republican Party these past few decades. They understand that if left to stand, this ruling threatens the religious institutions closest to their hearts—those serving Americans in need, such as hospitals, soup kitchens and immigrant services.

Conservatives may enjoy the problems this creates for Mr. Obama this election year. Still, for those who care about issues such as life and marriage and religious liberty that so roil our body politic, we ought to wish Catholic progressives well in their intra-liberal fight. For we shall never arrive at the consensus we hope for if we allow our politics to be divided between a party of faith and a party of animosity to faith. (Obama Offends the Catholic Left.)

 

"Consensus"? Catholics must be of one mind and one heart on matters of Faith and Morals. There are no such things as "conservative" Catholics and "liberal" Catholics. Those who are baptized as members of the one, true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, are never to be divided for a single moment on a matter so simple as this one, namely, that no one who supports the slicing and dicing of an innocent human being at any time for any reason without exception is qualified to hold any office, whether elected or appointed. Pope Pius XI explained the horrible fate that awaits those in public life who support the surgical killing of the preborn:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

 

Most Catholics who have adhered to the false opposite of the naturalist "left" in the United States of America have never understood this, preferring to believe their own organized crime family of naturalism, the Democratic Party, is the institution of "fairness" and "social justice," that surgical baby-killing under cover of the civil law is just one of "many" issues that voters have to weigh when choosing whom to support for elected office. An increasingly number of Catholics who adhere to the false opposite of the naturalist "right," however, are willing to subordinate the daily slaughter of the preborn by chemical and surgical means in order to "win, baby, win" and get Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus out of office in the belief that someone among the midget naturalists would "change" things and not be as bad as the reigning master demagogue.

Unfortunately for Catholics in the United States of American no matter where they fall along the political divide, the problem is  that the beginning, that is, at the very founding of this nation. The very "freedoms" that they cherish so much are all illusory as they permit every error imaginable to be spread under aegis of "constitutionally guaranteed rights." No country is truly free unless it submits itself to the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church.

As noted in yesterday's brief article,  Barack Hussein Obama is the "end result" of the accommodations that Americanist bishops of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries made to the false foundations of the United States of America and to the failure of the bishops, some validly consecrated and some not, to discipline any member of the Democrat Party back in the1970s who came out in support of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the companion cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973.

Look, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services who presided over the regulations that have sent Catholics of all different political stripes howling recently, has remained a Catholic in "good standing" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite her career long support for chemical and surgical baby-killing under cover of the civil law, including her support for the late Dr. George Tiller ("The Killer") when she was Governor of the State of Kansas from January 13, 2003, to March 28, 2009 (and prior to that when she served in the State of Kansas House of Representatives and then as the Sunflower State's Insurance Commissioner. (See Kansas Gov Kathleen Sebelius Held Secret Event With Late-Term Abortionist George Tiller.) Although Sebelius was warned by "Archbishop" Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, not to receive what purports to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, she remains in "good standing" in the conciliar structures. So do many others of like mind.

The American "bishops" and the Catholics they have miseducated do not believe these essential truths that were explicated clearly and unequivocally by pope after pope prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism with the "election" of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII on October 28, 1958:

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.)

 

Is baby-killing under cover of law, whether by surgical or chemical means, repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity? Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Biden believe in that which makes it impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquility because he supports evils that are opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. That those of the "left" amongst Catholics in the conciliar structures have not seen this in the past and might not even see it at the present time despite their criticism of the "excesses" of Barack Hussein Obama and Kathleen Sebelius is a most telling commentary on how they have expelled themselves from the Catholic Church because they believe that it is possible to produce true temporal peace and tranquility in spite of open support for the mystical dismemberment of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of preborn human beings.

Too strong?

Consider these words of Pope Leo XIII, contained in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896:

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).

 

No one who supports baby-killing under cover of law is a member of the Catholic Church in good standing. No one who enables the career of those who support baby-killing under cover of law is a member of the Catholic Church in good standing. Such people are the enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and thus the enemies of true social order founded in a docile acceptance of and submission to the Deposit of Faith that He has revealed exclusively to the Catholic Church, which alone has been charged by Him, her Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, to teach taught infallibly and safeguarded eternally the truths contained in that same Deposit of Faith.

Then again, why should any Catholic in this country know any of this. The counterfeit church of conciliarism, building upon the apostasies of Americanism, has made its "reconciliation" with the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of the modern civil state. Most of the conciliar "bishops" remonstrating the Obama Administration at this time and the "leftists" with whom of them, such as Roger "Cardinal" Mahony, the retired "archbishop" of Los Angeles, California, are oblivious to the simple fact that the truths taught by the true Catholic popes prior to the dawning of conciliarism bind their consciences and require their complete and total submission without any shadow of dissent whatsoever.

The likes of "leftist" Catholics do not know or understand the truth of Paragraph Three of Pope Saint Pius X's Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, because the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism accept the very falsehood of the separation of Church and State condemned by Pope Saint Pius X therein:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

 

Anyone, whether he be layman or one of the conciliar "bishops," who thinks that he is not bound by this simple reiteration of Catholic teaching ought to consider The Binding Nature of Catholic Social Teaching, reading very, very carefully these words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14) (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

 

Most Catholics in the United States of America are thus caught in the trap of apostasy created by Americanism, a trap that has ensnared most of the Catholics of the world by means of the ape of the Catholic Church that is the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Although the insidious lies of Americanism infect Catholics even in many full traditional chapels where no concessions are made to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, we must nevertheless recognize that the counterfeit church of conciliarism makes it impossible, humanly speaking, for the average Catholic yet attached to its illegitimate structures to know the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church about the absolute necessity of each civil state recognizing the true Faith and according It the favor and protection of the laws as public policy is undertaken and pursued in light of man's Last End.

There is a way out of the the trap of apostasy that is Americanism, and it runs through Our Lady's Fatima Message and her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart through to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit and as we distribute blessed Green Scapulars to those whom God's holy and ineffable Providence places in our paths each day. We trust in Our Lady. It is that simple. Those of us consecrated to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary can be the most effective instruments of converting our nation to the true Faith if we offer our Rosaries and all of daily prayers and actions and sufferings and humiliations in reparation for our sins and those of the whole world.

Saul of Tarsus was converted. Saint Stephen prayed for this as Saul was presiding over his stoning and then from Heaven after his death. You don't think that the likes of Barack Hussein Obama or Kathleen Sebelius or Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., can be converted? Think again. Think again. Keep praying. Keep praying.

As the late William C. Koneazny, the founder of the old Catholic Rendezvous meetings in Salisbury, Connecticut, noted before he died, "In the end, Our Lady is going to come and throw the bums out."

Yes, Bill, in the end Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph when a true pope consecrates Russia to that same Immaculate Heart with all of the world's bishops in fulfillment of her Fatima Message.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon, a triumph that will be heralded by unceasing shouts of:

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

 

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.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Polycarp, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?