Chastisements Under Which We Must Save Our Souls
Part One
by Thomas A. Droleskey
One of the reasons that there have been fewer articles this month is that we just happen to be in a relatively slow news cycle (talk about missing words!) right now. What little news might be worth a brief article is simply a recycling of other things that have reviewed literally hundreds of times on this site.
I have done some pretty comprehensive series in the past two months, including those on the issues of immigration (Good Catholic Common Sense Must Prevail, part 1 and Good Catholic Common Sense Must Prevail, part 2), false ecumenism (Forever Prowling the World Seeking the Ruin of Souls, part 1 and Forever Prowling the World Seeking The Ruin of Souls, part 2), the state of voluntary self-delusion into which traditionally-minded Catholics in the conciliar structures must immerse themselves in order to project the integrity of the Catholic Faith into the mind of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Boy, If Only The "Pope" Knew, part one and Boy, If Only The "Pope" Knew, partie deux ) and the many diversions used by the caesars of Modernity and the lords of Modernity to keep us focused on root causes (As New Dog and Pony Shows Come To Town, part one, As New Dog and Pony Shows Come to Town, part two, As New Dog and Pony Shows Come To Town, part three and As New Dog and Pony Shows Come To Town, part four (the end)). There is not a whole lot more that I can add, at least at this juncture, to those ten articles pieces (as well as the one hundred thirty-nine other new articles that have been written for this site since January 1, 2010.
Some themes have been explored repeatedly in order to help my readers, most of whom I realize full well are very busy and do not retain information readily as they are occupied with many concerns and might be bombarded with objections from relatives and friends that they find hard to answer because their state-in-life simply doesn't permit them to study what they read as though they had the same time as a college student, better absorb information and to remember it.
Oh, yes, yes, yes. There are times when I receive questions about matters that I have covered in numerous articles that can lead me, who am impatient by my particular nature as a New Yorker, a serious fault that I know is need of amendment as patience is the hallmark of sanctity (Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is infinitely patient with me, a recidivist sinner!), to become a tad bit frustrated. Some of the e-mails that respond to such inquiries to those who have been reading this site for a long time are tantamount to my saying: "Look. I've written about this exact question in lots of articles. I just don't have the time to answer individual questions from scores upon scores of readers every day that have been handled on the site in many past articles, which is is why I repeat themes in various articles." This is wrong. I know it. I have to confess it more often than I care to admit. It is simply bad Catholic witness.
Writing on the subjects that are covered on this site requires a good deal of hard work, which involves hours upon hours of research and verification, sometimes done thoroughly and sometimes done without the necessary double and triple checking of dubious facts whose incredibility should have been obvious (and I always apologize for such errors, two of which have been noted this year), before posting. Extra time spent on writing e-mails that can amount to a "miniature article" to cover points that I might have covered just a few days before is not something that I have in abundance, and there are some correspondents who get particularly disturbed if all I have to time to do by way of a response is to provide links to a few articles, writing back to tell me that I should have written them more extensively. I simply hath not the time on most days to do this.
Furthermore, although typographical errors have long been my bete noire (I could, as a teacher, spot the errors in the work of my students rather readily but am atrocious in doing this myself), I have noticed a tendency lately when reviewing articles after they have been posted (of course!) to find missing words and the use of different words than I had intended to use. This is something of a concern as it could be a simple function of the mind working fasting than the fingers on the keyboard or the fact that there is some degree of cognitive slippage. Have I reached the point where my intellectual capacities, as limited as I know that they are to begin with (and I know this better than anyone else), are beginning to decline? Have I reached the point where I have written all that needs to be written?
As I have noted many times on this site, none of the work produced on this or any other site is all that terribly important. Websites of this sort are viewed by a relative handful of people in comparison to the millions upon millions of people who visit the more popular "destinations" on "the world wide web" (see
Goofy Is Number Two, which is now no longer the case as the voice of "Goofy" has been displaced in the Alexa internet website rankings). Still and all, of course, as I see it, numbers do not matter.
Some readers have been very kind over the years in sending heartfelt notes of encouragement and assurances of their prayers while others have been extremely generous to us, some making what I know to be and appreciate as truly sacrificial gifts as they are in no better positions financially than we have been since I lost the support in April of 2003 of a foundation whose generosity made possible extended lecture tours and the publication of the print journal named Christ or Chaos. For better or for worse, the work that I do is the work upon which I shall be judged at the moment of my Particular Judgment. Until that time these very poor efforts to defend the Catholic Faith will continue as they offered to the throne of the Most Blessed Trinity through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. There just may not be the need to write repeatedly about things that have been elaborated upon at length in numerous articles.
What I would like to do in this brief article, the first of two-parts, therefore, is to just review a few recent developments in the world to put them in focus through the eyes of the true Faith. Tomorrow's equally brief article will focus on recent developments in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
Barack Hussein Obama's Continued Statist March
As noted in
Nanny State, U.S.A., Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus is one of those statists and elitists who believe that he is more enlightened, more benevolent, more forward-looking than the overweight, obese physically out of shape masses. He must help the physically "unfit" to "shape up." He must lead the unwilling American populace to surrender more and more of their legitimate liberties and their property, which is seized by means of confiscatory taxing policies, into becoming servile as utilitarian overseers in the employ of the government (as opposed to the utilitarian overseers in the employ of the health-care and and big pharmaceutical and insurance industries) decide how to ration health-care. (For a musical treatment of our situation, please listen to Father Louis Campbell's Money and his Milagro de Guadalupe.)
Obama's elitist class of statists who worship the environment and are content to continue the longstanding American policy of outsourcing manufacturing jobs to Red China are pantheists who believe in the Spartan concept of bodily stoicism for the "good" of the body politic while promoting one grave moral evil after another under the cover of the civil law and with the coerced financial support of American taxpayers. Obama's own inclination to rule by a thuggery and by a contempt of his critics and an outright indignation at the fact that his "received truths" could be criticized is capped by his being a product of the Saul Alinsky "community organizing tactics" that rely upon rank intimidation and character assassination of opponents that served him very well in the rough and tumble of politics in the City of Chicago, Illinois, as a product of the corrupt Cook County Democratic Party machine.
Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus is an admirer of the Eurosocialism that has created a cradle-to-the-grave dependency upon the state that has brought many of the nations of western Europe to their knees and is thus being rejected in those nations as a viable option for the future. To accomplish an "Amerosocialist" state our reigning caesar ignoramus is willing to sacrifice more and more of legitimate American sovereignty and to minimize the threat posed by Mohammedans who are even posing as Mexicans in communities near the United States border in order to take advantage of this nation's porous borders and almost nonexistent immigration enforcement at those borders because he believes that "diversity" is the "strength" of a nation. Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus, building upon the work of his not-so-pro-life predecessor, George Walker Bush, has effectively nationalized the automobile manufacturing and banking industries, plunging this nation into the sort of national debt from which it may never recover. Barack Hussein Obama want this to happen. He wants us to be come total wards of the state, which is why he continues to exploit the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for his own Eurosocialist, envirocommunist agenda.
We must, as has been noted on this site, remember that the march to statism is but the inevitable result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of the various interrelated yet multifaceted forces of naturalism that constitute Judeo-Masonry. Despite all of the differences between the false opposites of the naturalist "left" and the naturalist "right," they are united in rejecting the simple truth that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. No effort to "retard" the march to statism is going to be successful over the long term as men who do not accept the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church will be convinced that they can produce the "better" world by means of their laws and ideologies and programs, that they do not need to be humbly and docilely submissive to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted to Holy Mother Church nor that they need to rely upon Sanctifying Graces in order to please God in their own lives and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity.
Even if, for example, Republicans win control of one or both of the Houses of Congress of the United States of American in this year's "off-year" elections on November 2, 2010, the Commemoration of All Souls, they will not possess a veto-proof (two-thirds) majority in the United States Senate to undo ObamaCare or even Obama's envirocommunist "cap and trade" tax that will enrich his bankrollers at Goldman Sachs and line the pockets of many of those in the employ of his own administration if such a tax (along with other statist measures) is passed during a "lame duck" session of Congress held after the general elections in November of this year. And it remains to be seen whether Obama, whose unpopularity is on the rise, will be defeated in 2012 as the lessons learned on the merely natural level from the results of the Republican takeover of both houses of Congress in the November 7, 1994, off-year elections teach us that that "great victory" did nothing to prevent the re-election of a fully pro-abortion president, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, in 1996 or to dampen his popularity thereafter. It is just under fifty-two months until the 2012 presidential elections on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. That is a very long time in politics. A very long time.
Yes, it is encouraging to read that one poll, conducted under the watchful eye of the ever-zealous partisan Democrat, pro-abortion Catholic and continuing partisan of all things Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Carville, reveals that fifty-five percent of the American public considers Barack Hussein Obama to be a socialist (It's Official: Obama is a Socialist).
It's still a long time between now and November 6, 2012, at which time our ruling caesar can be counted upon to countenance the same kind of New Black Panther Party intimidation of white voters in places such as Philadelphia that will be winked at by former United States Attorney General Janet "See No Evil" Reno's Deputy Attorney General, Eric Himpton Holder, Jr., the current United States Attorney General (see Congressman Shouted Down After Claiming Not to Know About New Black Panther Case). Caesar Obamus will do anything to hold onto power in 2012 if, of course, he actually is re-nominated by the Democratic Party and is defeated by his naturalist counterpart in the Republican Party.
Obviously, readers can make of this assessment what they want. They can act as they want in the body politic. I will simply remind one and all that Pope Pius XI described the farcical nature of contemporary partisan politics when he wrote the following in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:
To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives.
These political struggles also beget threats of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of government. Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another.
The Catholic Church can, as has been indicated in various articles on this site, adapt herself to any legitimate form of government. She asks only that whatever form that men choose (monarchical, presidential-congressional, parliamentary-ministerial) recognize her as the true religion and that they will yield to her motherly intervention, exercised rarely and judiciously and only after the exhausting her Indirect Powers of teaching, preaching and exhortation, if she must interpose herself with them in the event that the good of souls demands her direct intervention. That the governments of Modernity are founded in anti-Incarnational errors of various sorts means that they are, despite the best "intentions" of those who believe in these errors, they are doomed to founder on the shoals of their false premises sooner or later. It appears plain to me that the time of reckoning has come as we are paying a high price for these false premises.
We must remember that we are living through a chastisement, a well-deserved one. Over fifty million babies have been slaughtered by surgical means under cover of the civil law in the United States of America since 1965. The government of the United States of America has funded chemical and surgical abortions (at least in the "hard cases" during Republican administrations and in all cases under Democratic administrations) at home and abroad for over three decades. ObamaCare itself, which the reigning caesar ignoramus had promised would pay for surgical baby-killing with taxpayer dollars, is proceeding with plans to do so (do you care, Representative Bart Stupak?):
The Obama administration has officially approved the first instance of taxpayer funded abortions under the new national government-run health care program. This is the kind of abortion funding the pro-life movement warned about when Congress considered the bill.
The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new "high-risk" insurance program under a provision of the federal health care legislation enacted in March.
It has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-abortion Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.
The high-risk pool program is one of the new programs created by the sweeping health care legislation, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama signed into law on March 23. The law authorizes $5 billion in federal funds for the program, which will cover as many as 400,000 people when it is implemented nationwide.
"The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million in federal tax funds, which we've discovered will pay for insurance plans that cover any legal abortion," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.
Johnson told LifeNews.com: "This is just the first proof of the phoniness of President Obama's assurances that federal funds would not subsidize abortion -- but it will not be the last."
"President Obama successfully opposed including language in the bill to prevent federal subsidies for abortions, and now the Administration is quietly advancing its abortion-expanding agenda through administrative decisions such as this, which they hope will escape broad public attention," Johnson said.
The abortion funding comes despite language in the bill that some pro-abortion Democrats and Obama himself claimed would prevent abortion funding and despite a controversial executive order Obama signed supposedly stopping abortion funding.
The pro-life community strongly opposed the executive order and said Rep. Bart Stupak and other House Democrats who voted for the pro-abortion health care bill in exchange for it were selling out their pro-life principles. This first case of forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions under the new law appears to prove them right that the bill language and executive order were ineffective.
Proving the point further that the abortion funding comes from federal taxpayer dollars, Johnson explained that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has emphasized that the high-risk pool program is a federal program and that the states will not incur any cost.
On May 11, 2010, in a letter to Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on implementation of the new law, DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote that “states may choose whether and how they participate in the program, which is funded entirely by the federal government.”
Johnson says that on June 28, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario (a member of the appointed cabinet of Governor Edward Rendell, a Democrat) issued a press release announcing that the federal Department of Health and Human Services had approved his agency's proposal for implementing the new program in Pennsylvania.
"The state will receive $160 million to set up the program, which will provide coverage to as many as 5,600 people between now and 2014," according to the release. "The plan's benefit package will include preventive care, physician services, diagnostic testing, hospitalization, mental health services, prescription medications and much more, with subsidized premiums of $283 a month."
Johnson says the "much more" Ario refers to is abortion funding.
The section on abortion (see page 14) asserts that "elective abortions are not covered," though it does not define elective -- which Johnson calls a "red herring."
The proposal specifies coverage "includes only abortions and contraceptives that satisfy the requirements of" several specific statutes, the most pertinent of which is 18 Pa. C.S. § 3204, which says abortion is legal in Pennsylvania. The statute essentially says all abortions except those to determine the sex of the baby are legal.
"Under the Rendell-Sebelius plan, federal funds will subsidize coverage of abortion performed for any reason, except sex selection," said NRLC's Johnson. "The Pennsylvania proposal conspicuously lacks language that would prevent funding of abortions performed as a method of birth control or for any other reason, except sex selection -- and the Obama Administration has now approved this." (OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OKS FIRST TAXPAYER-FUNDED ABORTIONS UNDER HEALTH CARE LAW.)
Grave evils of immodest dress, indecent speech, diabolical "music", motion pictures and television programs that glorify and promote evil and all manner of grotesque personal behavior have been hatched here in the Untied States of America and exported around the world in the name of "freedom." The labor forces of foreign nations have been exploited to line the coffers of multinational corporations who have loyalty only to the "bottom line" and to particular nation as usurious interest rates are charged to Americans to purchase these foreign-made goods and as entire communities suffer from the loss of jobs that have been sent overseas in complete violation of the responsibilities that employers have to their workers and their communities.
There is a price to pay for all of this. And as bad as things are now, my friends, we are just at the beginnings of the chastisement. It is not accident that many of the countries of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, including the Russian Federation (Russia) itself, are reverting back to the totalitarian ways of communism just as Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus moves this country ever more along the path to statism, thought-control and censorship of opposing views. Can anyone say the errors of Russia have been retarded in the slightest?
We should not have any fear about the present circumstances at all. None. All of the problems of the world, bar none, are caused by Original Sin and our own Actual Sins and can only be lessened in their prevalence to the extent that individual souls seek to grow in sanctity by cooperating with the Sanctifying Graces won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Men need the teaching and sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church to know the one and only true liberty that is the foundation of personal and social order, the freedom from the power of sin and eternal death won for us by Our Divine Redeemer on the wood of the Holy Cross as He suffered in His Sacred Humanity in atonement for our sins. There is no "naturalistic" short-cut to alleviate problems caused by our sins, problems that are exacerbated (worsened, if you will) by the public promotion of sin under cover of the civil law and throughout the nooks and crannies of what passes for popular culture.
This is the ninety-third anniversary of Our Lady's third apparition in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin Lucia dos Santos. This is the day, July 13, that Our Lady showed these shepherd children a vision of Hell itself:
"I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, [August] to continue to pray the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only she can help you."
"Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe."
Lucia made some requests for sick people, to which Mary replied that she would cure some but not others, and that all must say the rosary to obtain such graces, before continuing: "Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."
"You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.
"To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world."
Mary specifically told Lucia not to tell anyone about the secret at this stage, apart from Francisco, before continuing: "When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: 'O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need.' "
Lucia asked if there was anything more, and after assuring her that there was nothing more, Mary disappeared off into the distance. (Words spoken by Mary at Fatima.)
Yes, only Our Lady of the Rosary can help us at this time. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has, in His ineffable Mercy, given us the means to true world peace, His peace, that of a soul that reposes in the very inner life of the Most Blessed Trinity by means of Sanctifying Grace, through the His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart and by emphasizing our devotion to her Most Holy Rosary, which is, after all, the only aid available to those Catholics who are deprived of true priests and thus true sacraments by the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, who have dared to alter what purports to be the Holy Mass and even the Rosary to suit their own revolutionary purposes.
It was slightly less than twenty-four years before Our Lady's third appearance in the Cova da Iria on this date in 1917 that Pope Leo XIII stressed Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary as a remedy for the evils that afflicted his age that were but the precursors to those of own day:
These considerations will explain what We have already laid down concerning the fruitful advantages which are to be derived from the use of the Rosary, and the healing power which this devotion possesses for the evils of the age and the fatal sores of society. These advantages, as we may readily conceive, will be secured in a higher and fuller measure by those who band themselves together in the sacred Confraternity of the Rosary, and who are thus more than others united by a special and brotherly bond of devotion to the Most Holy Virgin. In this Confraternity, approved by the Roman Pontiffs, and enriched by them with indulgences and privileges, they possess their own rule and government, hold their meetings at stated times, and are provided with ample means of leading a holy life and of laboring for the good of the community. They are, are so to speak, the battalions who fight the battle of Christ, armed with His Sacred Mysteries, and under the banner and guidance of the Heavenly Queen. How faithfully her intercession is exercised in response to their prayers, processions, and solemnities is written in the whole experience of the Church not less than in the splendor of the victory of Lepanto. (Pope Leo XIII, Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893.)
Let us continue to pray our Rosaries as we thank God Himself for willing it to be the case for us to alive in this times when there is so much work to do for His greater honor and glory and for the good of souls, starting with our own, of course, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary as we seek to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world that are responsible for the problems of Modernity and Modernism.
What are we waiting for? Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.
Pope Saint Anacletus, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints