Channeling John Ireland

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Two of the most egregious exponents of the heresy of Americanism were James Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore from October 3, 1877, to March 24, 1921, and John Ireland, the Bishop and (starting in 1888) the Archbishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota, from July 31, 1884, to May 25, 1918. The "gospel" of both men was Americanism and American exceptionalism as the foundation for "reconciling" the Catholic Church with the age of democracy, civil and religious liberty, equality and "progress."

In other words, James Gibbons and John Ireland wanted to do precisely what Pope Leo XIII condemned in Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, and what the counterfeit church of conciliarism actually endorsed from the time of the "Second" Vatican Council, especially in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, both which which were issued on December 7, 1965, the Feast of Saint Ambrose and the Vigil of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and has been practiced by the conciliar revolutionaries and their progeny universally ever since then. Here is a little reminder of just how firmly Pope Leo XIII condemned the Judeo-Masonic ethos that was at the heart of the entire priestly work of John Ireland and James Gibbons:

 

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

 

James Gibbons, who was born in 1834, and John Ireland, who was born in 1838, both cultivated the spirit of "human dignity" long before Marc Sangnier, the founder of "The Sillon" in France that was created in the early Twentieth Century to promote the very same false "reconciliation" of the Catholic Church with the principles of Modernity, prompting Pope Saint Pius X to condemn it in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, in no uncertain terms:

 

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.

We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clear-thinking minds. The leaders of the Sillon have not been able to guard against these doctrines. The exaltation of their sentiments, the undiscriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior. To such an extent that they speak of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a familiarity supremely disrespectful, and that - their ideal being akin to that of the Revolution - they fear not to draw between the Gospel and the Revolution blasphemous comparisons for which the excuse cannot be made that they are due to some confused and over-hasty composition.

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

As for you, Venerable Brethren, carry on diligently with the work of the Saviour of men by emulating His gentleness and His strength. Minister to every misery; let no sorrow escape your pastoral solicitude; let no lament find you indifferent. But, on the other hand, preach fearlessly their duties to the powerful and to the lowly; it is your function to form the conscience of the people and of the public authorities. The social question will be much nearer a solution when all those concerned, less demanding as regards their respective rights, shall fulfill their duties more exactingly.

Moreover, since in the clash of interests, and especially in the struggle against dishonest forces, the virtue of man, and even his holiness are not always sufficient to guarantee him his daily bread, and since social structures, through their natural interplay, ought to be devised to thwart the efforts of the unscrupulous and enable all men of good will to attain their legitimate share of temporal happiness, We earnestly desire that you should take an active part in the organization of society with this objective in mind. And, to this end, whilst your priests will zealously devote efforts to the sanctification of souls, to the defense of the Church, and also to works of charity in the strict sense, you shall select a few of them, level-headed and of active disposition, holders of Doctors’ degrees in philosophy and theology, thoroughly acquainted with the history of ancient and modern civilizations, and you shall set them to the not-so-lofty but more practical study of the social science so that you may place them at the opportune time at the helm of your works of Catholic action. However, let not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the Rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

One will see shortly how the passages just quoted from Custodi di Quella Fede and Notre Charge Apostolique condemn the very essence of Americanism as well as that of The Sillon, which means that they condemn conciliarism as the latter is but the misbegotten, illegitimate progeny of a number of Modernist currents, including Americanism and The Sillon.

The prideful spirit of "human dignity" and "democracy" and of extolling the "progress of the age" that was at the heart of the false gospel preached by John Ireland, who hated Greek Catholics who were in communion with the Holy See and persecuted Father Alexis Toth, resulting in the loss of thousands of Greek Catholics nationwide to the Russian Orthodox Church, and James Gibbons, whose vocal support for and strong-arming efforts in behalf of the Judeo-Masonic-Communist Knights of Labor ultimately got Pope Leo XIII to reverse an earlier condemnation of the organization, was passed along to ordinary Catholics. Most of the social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII were never taught to the faithful, something that Pope Leo XIII noted in 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, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

Other than a  mostly warped teaching of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, most Catholics in the United States of America knew nothing of Pope Leo XIII's social encyclical letters, especially Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888, and Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890. They knew only that their bishops supported the American constitutional regime in its entirety, including the separation of Church and State that was extolled endlessly by John Ireland. The American bishops of yore (and even some traditionalist bishops today, it should be noted) were content to leave Catholics ignorant about Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of separation of Church and State in the United States of America:

 

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.

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.

Were Catholics in the United States of America taught this in 1895? No. Are they taught this today? No. 

Indeed, the current antipope emeritus, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, specifically praised the American constitutional model as the prototype of conciliarism's own "reconciliation" with the separation of Church and State that has been condemned repeatedly by our true popes and that Pope Saint Pius X termed a "thesis absolutely false" in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, as he, Pope Saint Pius X, explained that "the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State." Go tell that to the arch-Americanist by the name of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

 

In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution . . . .

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

"New definitions." Yes, "new definitions" for a new "faith" whose theological, philosophical and pragmatic underpinnings are, at least in part, traceable right here to the United States of America and the false, heretical beliefs of prideful men such as John Ireland and James Gibbons. It such men who are directly responsible for the rise of the quintessential Catholic Americanist in public, men and women who proclaim the "rights of the people" with impunity and without any effective sanction and almost no reproach from conciliar authorities here.

Such a man is Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., of course, who is too "proud" and "demanding of respect" as an American to kiss the ring of the man most of the people in the world is the "pope," Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis. Mind you, I would not kiss Bergoglio's ring as I know him to be an imposter, a man who is an enemy of Christ the King and of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem. The pro-abortion, pro-perversity Biden, however, does think that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is "Pope Francis." Ah, he is an American. He bows or kisses the ring of no one. His parents, dyed in the wool "American" Catholics, of course, taught him to "demand respect:"

 

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Joe Biden doesn’t kiss up to anyone — whether a queen or a pope.

The vice president told a gathering of Irish-Americans in New York City on Thursday that as a young U.S. senator he was to meet the queen of England.

He remembers getting a call from his mother, who told him not to kiss the queen’s ring.

Years later, when he was to meet Pope John Paul II, Biden says his mother told him not to kiss the pope’s ring.

Biden, a Roman Catholic descended from struggling Irish immigrants, says his dad said it was “all about dignity.”

Biden says his mother told him that no one is “better” than him. And while Biden should treat everyone with respect, his mother said her son should also “demand respect.” (Apostate Biden Speaks About Why He Did Not Kiss Apostate Bergoglio's Phony Episcopal Ring.)

Ah, yes, the American spirit. No one is "better" than we are. What hierarchy that exists in the Order of Creation (Nature) and the Order of Redemption (Grace)? What considering a man one believes is a true pope without the obeisance that is his due as the very Vicar of Christ the King on earth? Well, that's beneath the "dignity" of an American, right? And in this, you see, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., was just channeling the Americanist spirit of John Ireland's sermon preached in the Cathedral of Mary our Queen in Baltimore Maryland, on October 18, 1893, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the episcopal consecration of James Cardinal Gibbons, Ireland's co-conspirator in the creation of a new "faith," American Catholicism, which served as one of the prototypes for the "new faith" and the "new theology" and the "new liturgy" and the "new way of 'defining' doctrine" provided to "humanity" and the "age" by the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

The following very substantial excerpt from John Ireland's sermon, which must have gone on for two hours given its extraordinary length in written form, demonstrates the the likes of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. and his fellow pro-abortions and supporters of perversity and statism and the likes of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis are simply channeling Ireland and others of his ilk when they speak of "rights" and "dignity" and "progress" and "reconciliation with the age." A careful reading of the excerpt that follows, which contains emphasis supplied by this writer, will reveal key points of similarity between Americanism and concilairism:

 

Most Eminent Cardinal - Brethren of the Clergy and of the Laity:

Twenty-five years in exalted office, a bishop, a chieftain of bishops, in the Catholic Church, in America, in the latter days of this nineteenth century of the Christian era! Great the opportunities and weighty the responsibilities.

Of those years what record should I, who revere and love the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, fain have to write? Should it be that they went by without harm done or good prevented, without blemish or reproach? This, whatever its value along the dark lines of frail humanity, is, at best, but the story of the talent wrapped up in napkin folds and securely guarded from misuse. Not this record did Christ expect from apostles, and from this pulpit I will not speak it.

Should the record be that of common duties performed in zeal and loyalty, of useful ministry in blessing and ordaining, in building temples and asylums, in exhorting souls unto their salvation? This record would be that of the ten hundred; it merits no special praise; it teaches no special lesson, and it shall not be the theme of this evening.

The Common! We are surfeited with it.

Let others tell of the many. I wish to tell of the few. I am tired of the common; I am angry with it. If I am myself compelled to plod over its wearying pathways, I want, at least, to see others shun them, to see men rise far above their singular thoughts and singular deeds freshen human life and give it power to place itself in those high altitudes wherein is born progress. The common never puts humanity forward, never begets a great movement; nor does it save humanity when grave peril comes upon it. The common! We are surfeited with it; it have made our souls torpid and our limbs rigid. Under the guise of goodness it is a curse. The want in the world, the want in the Church, to-day as at other times, to-day as never before, is of men among men, of men who see further than others, rise higher than others, act more boldly than others. They need not be numerous. The never were numerous. But, while the few, they take with them the multitude and save humanity. The one man of sufficient grandeur of soul and firmness of hand saves a whole country; the one man saves the whole Church.

This evening it is my coveted privilege to honor a man among men. The record of the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore! I speak it with pride and exultation; it is the record I should have traced for my ideal bishop and leader of men in these solemn times through which the Church is passing.

The New Era Has Come: The Church Needs to Adapt Herself To It

The times are solemn. In no epoch of history, since the beginning of the Christian era, did changes so profound and so far-reaching occur. There is in the physical sphere of human activity a complete revolution. Discoveries and inventions have opened to us a new material world. Social and political conditions have been transformed. Intellectual curiosity is intense and peers with keenest eye into the recesses of sky and earth. Intellectual ambition, maddened by wondrous successes in many fields, puts on daring pinions and challenges all limitations of knowledge. The human heart is emboldened to the strangest dreams and frets itself into desperate efforts in presence of all barriers to the completion of its desires. Let things be new, is the watchword of the present humanity, and to make things new is its strong resolve. To this end are pledged its most fierce activities, which, in whatever part of man’s realm they are exercised, have their illustration in the stream and electricity of the new material creation.

In the midst of these times the Catholic Church moves and works, professing, as her charter obliges her, to conquer minds and hearts, individuals and society. Her mission to the world is what it was for long centuries: but the world wears a new aspect. The Church sails upon the waters of the same ocean upon whose bosom she has glided since her first departure from Palestine: but the new winds trouble those waters and toss them into unusual billows. No long argument is needed to show that there ought to be new movements of the helm in the Ship of State and new unfurlings of canvas from her masts.

Now is the opportunity for great and singular men among the sons of God’s Church. To-day old-time routine is fatal; to-day the common is worn-out senility. The crisis demands the new, the extraordinary, and with it the Catholic Church will score the grandest of her victories in the grandest of history’s ages.

Oh, just an interjection here. What was that I wrote about days ago in Modernism Repackaged as Newness? Something about "new," wasn't it? Yes, I believe so.

Back to John Ireland, thank you very much:

 

There Is A Discord Between Age and Church. Where the Fault Lies

“There is a discord between the age and the Church.” I recall the fact with sorrow. The interests of society and of religion suffer, while misunderstanding and separation last. The peace of harmony is the price of well-being and of progress.

The fault lies with the age and with the Church, or rather with spokesmen of the age and spokesmen of the Church. Age and Church, rightly apprehended, are in no manner at war. The age, as it is represented to us, is at fault. Elated with its material and intellectual successes, it is proud and exaggerates its powers. It imagines that the natural, which has served it so well, is all sufficient; it tends to the exclusion of the supernatural; it puts on the cloak of secularism. In it worship of the new, which the march of progress brings to it, whatever is old is suspected. It asks why its church may not be new as well as its chemistry or its science of mechanics. A church bearing on her front the marks of nineteen centuries is in its eyes out of date and out of place. Pride and thoughtlessness are the evil and misleading characteristics of the age.

The Church, as she comes before us in the speech and actions of churchmen, deserves her share of reproach. I speak as a Catholic with sincere love for the Catholic Church. I know the divine elements in the Church which Christ has made the repository of truth and grace, and I have full faith that those elements are at all times guarded under the unerring breathings of of the Holy Spirit. But I know, too, the human elements in the Church. Men in the Church retain their human parts, and upon their wisdom and their energy very much of the Church’s outward weal is made dependent. The Church has had her epochs, differing one from another in light and glory, as Catholic pastors and Catholic people scanned the world with clearer sight and unsheathed the spiritual sword with greater alacrity. The dependence of the Church upon her human elements is often too easily forgotten although the Church herself authoritatively teaches that undue reliance upon divine grace is a sin of presumption.

The Mistakes Of Churchmen In Not Seeking To Conciliate The Age

I am not afraid to say that, during the century whose sun is now setting, men in the Church have made the mistake of being to too slow to understand the new age and too slow to extend toward it the conciliatory hand of friendship. They were not without their excuses, the strength of which I respect. The Church in her divine elements is unchangeable, supremely conservative. Her dread of change, so righteous is a degree, is likely to be carried beyond the legitimate frontier and made to cover ground where change is proper. The existence under most inauspicious and repellent form. The revolution of 1789 whose waters, rushing and destructive as those of the maddest mountain torrent, were created with the crimson of blood, was the loud signal of the birth of the new era. The standard-bearers of the age often bore aloft the insignia of impiety and of social anarchy. Certain men, as Lamennais, who attempted, an alliance between the age and the Church, were imprudent in speech, and in their impatience they courted failure for themselves and discouragement for their allies. But with all these excuses churchmen thought and acted too slowly. They failed to grasp the age, to Christianize its aspirations and to guide its forward march; it passed beyond them. There were the few Lacordaires, who recognized and proclaimed the duties of the hour; timid companions abandoned them; reactionaries accused them of dangerous liberalism, of semi-heresy, and they were forced to be silent. The many saw but the vices of the age, which they readily anathematized; its good and noble tendencies they ignore and denied. The age was for them the dark world against which Christ has warned his followers. The task of winning it to the gospel was considered a forlorn hope. It was a task to be accomplished only through some stupendous miracle from heaven, and until the miracle came the ministers of Christ withdrew, as into winter quarters, into sacristies and sanctuaries, where surrounded by a small band of chosen ones, they could guard themselves and their friends from the all-pervading contagion. The age, abandoned to itself and to false and mischievous guides, estranged each year more and more from the Church on account of the Church’s isolation of her energies, irritated by her unfriendliness, became hardened in its secularism and taught itself to despise and hate religion. This deplorable condition prevailed in some countries more that in others; but from none was it totally absent. The Church had seemingly furled her flag of battle, her flag of victory.

The Opportunity For The Great And Singular Churchman.

It was a mistake and a misfortune. God and teach all nations, the Christ has said once for all times, and in obedience to these words the first apostles rushed into the roman Empire, speaking to the sages of Athens on Mars’ Hill, to the patricians and senators of Rome in the very courts of emperors, to the slaves in their huts, and the roman Empire was christianized. Radically, erring and evil-doing as the present age may have been, the methods and zeal of the early apostles would have won it to the Saviour. But, in veriest fact, the present age, pagan in its language and in the excesses of its qualities, is in its depths instinct with Christian emotions; it worships unwittingly at Christian shrines and awaits but the warm contact with the living Christian religion to avow itself Christian.

I indicate the opportunity for the great and singular churchman. His work is to bridge the deep valley separating the age from the Church, to clear off the clouds which prevent the one from seeing the realities of the other, to bring the Church to the age, and the age to the Church.

We must know that the age and the Church are not hopelessly apart.

The Bad And The Good In The Age

The age has, assuredly, its errors and its sins, and these the Church never can condone. With the age conceived as the embodiment of errors and sins the Church cannot be reconciled. But these are the accidents, not the essentials, in the make-up of the age. For my part, I see in the present age one of the mighty upheavals which occur from time to time in humanity, causing and marking the ascending stages in its continuous progress. Humanity strengthened by centuries of reflection and of toil, nourished and permeated by principles of Christian truth, is lifting upward its whole mass to higher regions of light and of liberty, and demanding a fuller and more universal enjoyment of its God-given rights. All this is praiseworthy; all this is beautiful and noble. It is all this that we are asked to accept when we accept the age, and in accepting the age we give ourselves the right the chide it for its defects–we put ourselves in a position to correct them.

Yes, yes, another brief interjection here. The sins of "the age" are indeed of its essence. They were in 1893 and continue to be now the direct consequence of the "age" of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, the "age" of concilairism's" official "reconciliation" with the principles of the "new era inaugurated in 1789." Gee, who was wrote about that "reconciliation" thirty-one years ago now? I got it:

 

Let us be content to say here that the text [of Gaudium et Spes] serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)

Does this mean that the Council should be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the "demolition of the bastions" is a long-overdue task. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 391.)

There's a lot of channeling of John Ireland that's gone on in our times. And speaking of that deceased devil, let us return to his heretical screed:

 

The Invariable And the Variable; The Permanent And The Transient In The Church

The Church, too, has her accidents and her essentials. We must be able to distinguish the former from the latter; we must be prepared, while jealously guarding the essentials, to let got the accidents as circumstances of time and place require. What the church at any time was, certain people hold she ever must be. They do her much harm, making her rigid and unbending, incapable of adapting herself to new and changing surroundings. The Church, created by Christ for all ages, lives in every age and of every age. We find consequently, in her outward belongings the variable and the contingent. The Church, at one time imperialistic in her political alliances, was at another feudalistic; but she never committed herself in principle to imperialism or feudalism. She spoke Greek in Athens and Latin in Rome, and her sons wore the chlamys or the toga; but she was never an institution confined to Greece or to Italy. In later days she lisped the nascent languages of Goths and Franks, and showed in her steppings through their lands not a little of their uncultured bearing and of their defective civilization without being a Gothic or Frank product, limited in life and conditions to the life and conditions of her contemporaries. Her scientific knowledge at different epochs was scant as that of those epochs; her social legislation and customs, as their, were rude and tentative. She was simply in her human elements partaking of the life of her epochs, her divine elements always remaining the self-same, however shifting the mundane scenes around her. Two or three centuries ago, she was courtly and aristocratic under the temporal sway of the Fifth Charles of Spain or the Fourteenth Louis of France; but this again was a passing phase in her existence, and she may be at other times as democratic in her demeanor as the most earnest democracy would expect. Her canon law, which is the expression of her adaptability to circumstances, received the impress at one time of the Justinian code, at another that of the capitularies of Charlemagne, at another that of the Hapsburg or Bourbon edicts: but she was never mummified in Justinian or Bourbon moulds, and her canon law may be as American as it was Roman, as much the reflection of the twentieth century as it ever was of the middle ages. Were not all this most true the Church would not be catholic , as her founder was catholic, the teacher and Saviour of all ages and of all nations. Let us be as broad and as catholic in our conceptions of the Church as Christ was, and we shall find no difficulty in recognizing her fitness to all lands and to all ages–the past as well as the present, and the presents and the future as well as the past.

 

All right, all right. Be quiet. This is my website. I will interject whenever I want do for the [mostly] freeloading readers who refuse to read or respond to the Donations page (smile--all in good, honest fun at 12:17 a.m., Eastern Daylight Saving Time, as we are grateful to those who have responded, some doing so very generously indeed).

This a complete misrepresentation of the history of Holy Mother Church, she who lacks nothing in her Divine Constitution and who has raised to her altars civil potentates such as Saint Edward the Confessor, Saint Casimir, Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Wenceslaus of Bohemia, Saint Henry the Emperor, Saint Canute of Denmark and Saint Louis IX, King of France, among others. These monarchs ruled in behalf of the one and only Sovereign, Christ the King.

Sure, there were prelates who did the bidding of corrupt kings during the era of Christendom. So what? Americanist bishops and their conciliar successors have done the same thing in the United States of America as they have sought to make their own "reconciliation" with the spirit of the age. The bad example during Christendom was the result of fallen human nature. The accommodations in the United States of America made to statist politicians who support all manner of moral and social evils have been part and parcel of the Americanist approach to public policy by means of "dialogue" and "discussion," if not outright surrender.

No sale, John Ireland. No sale. We're not buying the self-serving misrepresentation of history that you're selling. No sale. While Holy Mother Church indeed has adapted herself to the specific conditions in which her children have found themselves in order to teach and sanctify them, she never concedes a thing to principles or practices that are opposed to Divine Revelation and thus to the temporal and eternal good of souls. No sale, Ireland. No sale.

Indeed, it should be remembered that a man who has been channeling the spirit of John Carroll and John Ireland and James Gibbons from his earliest seminary days in the 1940s has made the same false "distinctions" between "permanent" and "transient" that Ireland did on October 18, 1893, and has made the numerous misrepresentations of history to justify his conciliar revolution:

 

In theses 10-12, the difficult problem of the relationship between language and thought is debated, which in post-conciliar discussions was the immediate departure point of the dispute.

The identity of the Christian substance as such, the Christian 'thing' was not directly ... censured, but it was pointed out that no formula, no matter how valid and indispensable it may have been in its time, can fully express the thought mentioned in it and declare it unequivocally forever, since language is constantly in movement and the content of its meaning changes. (Fr. Ratzinger: Dogmatic formulas must always change.)

The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time.

(Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, cited at Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete)

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

Channeling John Ireland quite indeed. Quite indeed.

Back to the heretic Ireland:

 

The New Crusade–Bringing Into Close Contact Church And Age

What! the Church of the living God, the Church of ten thousand victories over pagans and barbarians, over false philosophies and heresies, over defiant kings and unruly peoples–the great, freedom-loving, philanthropic, truth-giving Catholic Church–this Church afraid of the nineteenth century! afraid of any century! not seeing in the nineteenth the fervent ebullitions of noblest sentiments, the germinations of her own Christlike plantings; this Church not eager for the fray, not precipitating herself with force irresistible upon this modern world to claim it, to love it, to foster and admire or to correct and cure, to own it for Christ, and with her impetuous arm to lift it to the very summit of its highest aspirations, to which only the Church’s aid this panting, hoping, despairing world can every reach! Far, far from Catholics be the chilling, fatal, un-Catholic thought!

I preach the new, the most glorious crusade. Church and age! Unite them in the name of humanity, in the name of God.

Church and age! Bring them into close contact; they pulsate alike; the God of humanity works in one, the God of supernatural revelations works in the other–in both the self-same God.

The Characteristics of The Age--Its Ambition of Knowledge.

Let us note the chief characteristics of the age. The age is ambitious of knowledge. Its searchings take no rest and submit to no limitations of territory. Be it so. The Catholic Church proclaims that all truth, natural and supernatural, is from God, and that the mind, whose proper aliment is truth, grows more God-like as it absorbs truth in more generous proportions. Two sources of knowledge there are according to Catholic teaching, both from god,--the individual reason of man and the voice of God in revelation. Between reason and revelation there never can be a contradiction, the so-called war between Church and science being a war between the misrepresentations of science and the misrepresentations of faith, or rather between certain ignorant scientists and certain ignorant theologians. The Church desires the spread of intellectual light among all men and over all regions of truth; the age in its tireless studying of nature does the work of the Church. The discoveries of the age, whether in minute aminalcules or in vast fiery orbs, demonstrate God. They show forth through all the laws of the universe an absolute cause, all-wise, all-powerful, eternal, and this cause is God. The fruits of historical inquisitions, of all social and moral meditations, give us Christ rising from the dead and raising the world from the dead. They give us Christ's Church as the enduring embodiment of Christ's mission. The knowledge of the age! The age has not a sufficiency of it, and the need of the hour, the duty of the Church, is to urge the age to deeper researches, to more extensive surveyings, leaving untouched no particle of matter that may conceal a secret, no incident of history, no act in the life of humanity that may solve a problem. The knowledge of the age! the Church blesses it; the Church aids its onward growth with all her might, with all her light.

It Is An Age of Liberty--the Age of the Democracy.

It is an age of liberty, civil and political; it is the age of the democracy, when the whole people, tired of the unrestricted way of sovereigns, become themselves the sovereigns, become themselves the sovereigns, and exercise with more or less directness the power was always their primarily by divine ordinance. The age of the democracy! The Catholic Church, I am sure, has no fear of the democracy, this flowering of her own most sacred principles of the equality, fraternity, and liberty of all men, in Christ and through Christ. These principles are spread upon every page of the gospel. From the moment they were first confided to the Church they have been ceaselessly leavening minds and hearts towards the fullest recognition of rights and the dignity among all men, toward the elevation of the multitudes of men, and the enjoyment by them of freedom from unnecessary restrictions, of social happiness mingled with as few sorrows as earth's planet permits. The whole history of the Catholic Church is the record of the enfranchisement of the slave, the curbing of royal tyranny, the defence of the poor, of the people, of woman, of all the social entities that pride and passion choose to trample upon. The great theologians of the Church, an Aquinas, a Suarez, provide in their teachings complete foundations for the political democracy, which assumes in the presume age its plenary form. They assert and prove that all political power comes from God through the people, whose delegates kings and princes are, and that when rulers become tyrants the inalienable right of revolution is reserved to the people. The Church lives under all forms of government. When ratified by the people all forms of legitimate; but the government which more than another is that of the people, by the people, and for the people, is the one where the Church of the people, the Catholic Church, breathes air most congenial to her principles of her heart.

What amazing blasphemy. What heresy.

Archbishop John Ireland, who is channeled by the likes of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and the lords of Modernism such as Ratzinger/Benedict and Bergoglio/Francis in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

The sovereignty of the people? All political power comes from God through the people? This is a direct misrepresentation of Catholic teaching and it was a slap in the face to the reigning pope at the time that John Ireland preached this sermon, Pope Leo XIII, who wrote the following about the "sovereignty of the people" in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

 

The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.

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. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

John Ireland, you were busted in your day by Pope Leo XIII. You knew that this was the case. You did not care. As a proud American who set the stage for the plague represented by such men as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., in our own day, you knew better. You had to do it "your way." Perhaps it was you who whispered the words of "My Way" into Francis Albert Sinatra's ears whenever he sang that insidious song.

 

It Is An of Social Justice; It is An Age of Material Progress

It is an age of social battlings for justice to all men, for the right of all men to live in the frugal comfort becoming rational creatures, to all of whom birth in the world gives them title of a sufficiency of the things of the world. Very well; is not this sudden revolution which has come upon men in the plea for social justice and social comfort the loud outburst of the cry which has ever been going forth from the bosom of the Church since the words were spoken by the Founder: "Seek first the king of God and His justice, and all things else should be added unto you"? It is not sufficiently made public that the principles underlying the social movement of the times in all its legitimate demands are the principles constantly taught in Catholic theological schools, as, for instance, this chief one proclaimed by the Cardinal Manning, to the horror of the aristocratic England, that in case of extreme need of food all goods become common property. Catholics have of late been so accustomed to lock up their teachings in temple and seminary that when the same teachings appear in active evolution upon the broad sea of humanity they do not recognize them; they even fear and disown them.

It is an age of material progress, of inventions, of the subjugation of nature's forces to the service of man, of the building up of the man over all irrational creatures. Does Church in these things condemn the age? It is her doctrines that the earth was given to man that he dominates over it. Progress of every kind the Church blesses; for progress along the lines of all human activities and human uses is the divine ordering,--stagnation and inactivity calling down from God reprobation, as we learn from the parable of the talents. (Archbishop John Ireland, A Sermon of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Episcopal Consecration of His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore. Full text found in The Voice of the Church, a book published by the Bishops of the United States of America in 1899, pp. 103-113. We were given this book by a friend of ours who believed that it would be of use in my work. It is a treasure of Americanism mixed in with various articles that are authentically Catholic. In other words, it was very representative of the state of confusion that existed in the minds of Catholics in the United States of America at the end of the Nineteenth Century, a state of confusion that has now been spread worldwide as a result of conciliarism's embrace of "the age.")

Well, I think it prudent, wise and necessary to call upon three popes named Pius at this juncture:

 

80. The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.- -Allocution "Jamdudum cernimus," March 18, 1861. (Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864.)

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: 'These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.' On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason'; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.' Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: 'Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.' (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Those who want to channel the thought and carry out in deed the false teaching of the likes of John Ireland are, whether or not they realize it, channeling the devil as it is he who desires Holy Mother Church to be adapted to an "age" that has been born and is now foundering as the direct consequences of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and institutionalized by the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry that followed in its wake.

Good. I am glad that that is settled once and for all.

We call upon Saint Vincent Ferrer, O.P., to help us to cleave to the truths of the Catholic Faith and not to the falsehoods of Modernism in any of its guises, including that of Americanism.

Using the same instrument that the founder of Saint Vincent Ferrer's religious community was given by Our Lady to fight the Albigensian heresy, may every Rosary we pray help to plant a few seeds for an end to the madness of Modernity in the world and of Modernism as it has been spread and fostered by the counterfeit church in conciliarism as the fruit of the Triumph of Our Lady's Fatima Message and thus of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us, especially on your feast day today!

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Dominic de Guzman, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, O.P., pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix A

From Pope Leo XIII's Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900\

We are indeed now very far removed in time from the first beginnings of Redemption; but what difference does this make when the benefits thereof are perennial and immortal? He who once hath restored human nature ruined by sin the same preserveth and will preserve it for ever. "He gave Himself a redemption for all" (1 Timothy ii., 6)."In Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Corinthians xv., 22). "And of His Kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i., 33). Hence by God's eternal decree the salvation of all men, both severally and collectively, depends upon Jesus Christ. Those who abandon Him become guilty by the very fact, in their blindness and folly, of their own ruin; whilst at the same time they do all that in them lies to bring about a violent reaction of mankind in the direction of that mass of evils and miseries from which the Redeemer in His mercy had freed them.

Those who go astray from the road wander far from the goal they aim at. Similarly, if the pure and true light of truth be rejected, men's minds must necessarily be darkened and their souls deceived by deplorably false ideas. What hope of salvation can they have who abandon the very principle and fountain of life? Christ alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John xiv., 6). If He be abandoned the three necessary conditions of salvation are removed.

It is surely unnecessary to prove, what experience constantly shows and what each individual feels in himself, even in the very midst of all temporal prosperity-that in God alone can the human will find absolute and perfect peace. God is the only end of man. All our life on earth is the truthful and exact image of a pilgrimage. Now Christ is the "Way," for we can never reach God, the supreme and ultimate good, by this toilsome and doubtful road of mortal life, except with Christ as our leader and guide. How so? Firstly and chiefly by His grace; but this would remain "void" in man if the precepts of His law were neglected. For, as was necessarily the case after Jesus Christ had won our salvation, He left behind Him His Law for the protection and welfare of the human race, under the guidance of which men, converted from evil life, might safely tend towards God. "Going, teach ye all nations . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew xxviii., 19-20). "Keep my commandments" john xiv., 15). Hence it will be understood that in the Christian religion the first and most necessary condition is docility to the precepts of Jesus Christ, absolute loyalty of will towards Him as Lord and King. A serious duty, and one which oftentimes calls for strenuous labour, earnest endeavour, and perseverance! For although by Our Redeemer's grace human nature hath been regenerated, still there remains in each individual a certain debility and tendency to evil. Various natural appetites attract man on one side and the other; the allurements of the material world impel his soul to follow after what is pleasant rather than the law of Christ. Still we must strive our best and resist our natural inclinations with all our strength "unto the obedience of Christ." For unless they obey reason they become our masters, and carrying the whole man away from Christ, make him their slave. "Men of corrupt mind, who have made shipwreck of the faith, cannot help being slaves. . . They are slaves to a threefold concupiscence: of will, of pride, or of outward show" (St. Augustine, De Vera Religione, 37). In this contest every man must be prepared to undergo hard ships and troubles for Christ's sake. It is difficult to reject what so powerfully entices and delights. It is hard and painful to despise the supposed goods of the senses and of fortune for the will and precepts of Christ our Lord. But the Christian is absolutely obliged to be firm, and patient in suffering, if he wish to lead a Christian life. Have we forgotten of what Body and of what Head we are the members? "Having joy set before Him, He endured the Cross," and He bade us deny ourselves. The very dignity of human nature depends upon this disposition of mind. For, as even the ancient Pagan philosophy perceived, to be master of oneself and to make the lower part of the soul, obey the superior part, is so far from being a weakness of will that it is really a noble power, in consonance with right reason and most worthy of a man. Moreover, to bear and to suffer is the ordinary condition of man. Man can no more create for himself a life free from suffering and filled with all happiness that he can abrogate the decrees of his Divine Maker, who has willed that the consequences of original sin should be perpetual. It is reasonable, therefore, not to expect an end to troubles in this world, but rather to steel one's soul to bear troubles, by which we are taught to look forward with certainty to supreme happiness. Christ has not promised eternal bliss in heaven to riches, nor to a life of ease, to honours or to power, but to longsuffering and to tears, to the love of justice and to cleanness of heart.

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. . . .

This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

Appendix B

From Pope Saint Pius X's Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.

Appendix C

From Pope Pius XI's Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.

It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.

It is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned after the authority of God, the Father, from Whom, as a matter of fact, it originates and after which even it is named. (Ephesians iii, 15) The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth, and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy Family. Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble all who live up to its demands. Christ reigns where the position in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized, for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain, must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense that she should abstract in the least from their authority, each in its own sphere supreme, but that she should really perfect their authority, just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain promoters of their happiness here below.

It is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ -- "the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ." It is no less unquestionable that, in doing all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom, we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace.

Appendix D

From Pope Pius XI's Quas Primas, December 11, 1925

Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: "His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ." Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. "Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved." He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. "For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?" If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. "With God and Jesus Christ," we said, "excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation."

Appendix E

From Pope Pius IX's Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864

But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."

And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?