Cushing's Children
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Pastors of souls voluntarily renounce biological progeny in order to beget progeny of their spirit. Bishops and priests will never see all of the children begotten of their spirit in this passing, mortal vale of tears. They will see some of these children, obviously, who are begotten in the Baptismal font or regenerated in the Sacrament of Penance or those who are kind enough to send them notes of gratitude for their efforts to help them to save their immortal souls. It is, as I have had occasion to remind more than a few discouraged priests over the years, the case that most of the spiritual progeny of our true pastors will not be known until eternity as Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in His desire to keep His shepherds humble, will conceal from those who have been conformed to His Priesthood and Victimhood by virtue of their priestly ordination the extent to which their priestly ministry has borne fruit in the regeneration of souls unto eternal life.
A true bishop or a true priest may not know until eternity that the Actual Graces made present by his offerings of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass helped souls halfway around the world to find their way back to the true Church if they had strayed from her maternal bosom. Similarly, the Actual Graces made present by a priest's offerings of Holy Mass and the prayers and penances and sacrifices and penances and humiliations that he offers up to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary might make it possible for a non-Catholic to convert to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. The voluntary renunciation of self by a bishop, who exercises the fullness of the Priesthood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or a priest is an imitation of the offering of the One Whose Sacrifice of the Cross that re-present in an unbloody manner in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself explained to the Apostles that they could expect a reward in Heaven for their voluntary renunciation of self in their service of His Holy Faith:
Then Peter answering, said to him: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have? And Jesus said to them: Amen, I say to you, that you, who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting. And many that are first, shall be last: and the last shall be first. (Matthew 19: 27-30.)
Pope Pius XI reiterated this point in his encyclical letter on the priesthood, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, December 30, 1935:
On the other hand, by sincere disinterestedness the priest can hope to win the hearts of all. For detachment from earthly goods, if inspired by lively faith, is always accompanied by tender compassion towards the unfortunate of every kind. Thus the priest becomes a veritable father of the poor. Mindful of the touching words of his Savior, "As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me," he sees in them, and, with particular affection, venerates and loves Jesus Christ Himself.
Thus the Catholic priest is freed from the bonds of a family and of self-interest, -- the chief bonds which could bind him too closely to earth. Thus freed, his heart will more readily take flame from that heavenly fire that burns in the Heart of Jesus; that fire that seeks only to inflame apostolic hearts and through them "cast fire on all the earth." This is the fire of zeal. Like the zeal of Jesus described in Holy Scripture, the zeal of the priest for the glory of God and the salvation of souls sought to consume him. It should make him forget himself and all earthly things. It should powerfully urge him to dedicate himself utterly to his sublime work, and to search out means ever more effective for an apostolate ever wider and ever better.
The good and faithful witness to the service of the Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, can help to shape the souls of the young so firmly that they will be inspired throughout their lives in the pursuit of sanctity by the mere thought of the holy priest who taught them when they were but mere children. Such a young person grown to maturity and even to be advanced in years and may have struggled with various sins as he has attempted to walk the rocky road that leads to the Narrow Gate of Life Himself will always remember the efficacious example of a good and holy priest who spend himself tirelessly in behalf of the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.
Example cuts both ways, however. A priest who is callous in his treatment of the flock entrusted to his pastoral care or who is indolent or worldly can, most unfortunately, drive souls out of the Church. Mind you, we are supposed to understand that the bad example given by a priest or a Sister--or by any one of us--is simply the result of fallen human nature and is not indicative of any "fault" with the Holy Faith. Each of us gives bad example. Some of us even give scandal by our words and actions. Bad example and scandal are incentives to those who are guilty of them to reform their lives and of those who are witness to them to pray for the conversion of the offending parties. No one's bad example and no one's scandal is an excuse to quit the practice of the Holy Faith, which is nothing other than an act of spiritual suicide.
Fallen human nature being what it is, however, bad example and scandal and bad teaching does produce harmful consequences in the souls of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's "little ones." This is especially the case with bishops and priests, as Dom Chautard pointed out in The Soul of the Apostolate:
If the priest is a saint, the people will be fervent; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than those who beget it in Christ.
The glories of Christendom were reaped in the Thirteenth Century as a result of the seeds that were planted by the two great reformers of the Church who had been raised up by God in that century's first decade, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic de Guzman. We were given the great witness of Saint Louis IX, King of France and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, both Third Order Franciscans. We were given Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, given to Saint Dominic, and her Brown Scapular, which was given to Saint Simon Stock. We were given the work of Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Albert the Great and Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Hyacinth and his brother, Saint Ceslaus, and Saint Bonaventure. The Faith permeated the entirety of popular culture in that century of glories despite the bad example given by so many. The good example of these great saints helped Christendom to flower to its utmost glory.
Father Denis Fahey wrote in his The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World that the Faith is indeed supposed to flow into the world, as each of the saints of the Thirteenth Century themselves recognized and sought to inspire others to accept:
In proportion as the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind, political and economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, endowed, as she is, with the right of intervention in temporal affairs whenever necessary, because of her participation in the spiritual Kingship of Christ. Thus the natural or temporal common good of States came to be sought in a manner calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ, and social life came more and more fully under the influence of the supreme end of man, the vision of God in Three Divine Persons.
Accordingly, Catholic Social Order, viewed as a whole, is not primarily the political and social organization of society. It is primarily the supernatural social organism of the Church, and then, secondarily, the temporal or natural social order resulting from the influence of Catholic doctrine on politics and economics and from the embodiment of that influence in social institutions. If instead of Catholic Social Order we use the wider but more convenient expression of Kingdom of God, we may say that the Kingdom of God on earth is in its essence the Church, but, in its integrity, comprises the Church and the temporal social order which the influence of the Church upon the world is every striving to bring into existence. Needless to say, while the general principles of social order remain always the same, social structures will present great differences at different epochs. No particular temporal social order will ever realize all that the Church is capable of giving to the world. The theology of history must include, then, primarily, the study of the foundation and development of the Church, and secondarily, the examination of the ebb and flow of the world’s acceptance of the Church’s supernatural mission. . . .
The organization of the Europe of the thirteenth century furnishes us with one concrete realization of the Divine Plan. It is hardly necessary to add that there were then to be seen defects in the working of the Divine Plan, due to the character of fallen man, as well as an imperfect mastery of physical nature. Yet, withal, the formal principle of ordered social organisation in the world, the supremacy of the Mystical Body, was grasped and, in the main, accepted. The Lutheran revolt, prepared by the cult of pagan antiquity at the Renaissance, and by the favour enjoyed by the Nominalist philosophical theories, led to the rupture of that order." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, p. 10.)
The insidious influences of the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King and brought about, in turn, the religiously indifferent and/or anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity helped to corrupt many bishops and priests to such an extent that they produced a spiritual generation, if you will, of Catholics who followed them, these bishops and priests, into believing that the false premises of the modern civil state were actually good in and of themselves and thus a reliable foundation upon which to build a stable social order.
Most, although not all, of the bishops and priests of the United States of America in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries were absolutely convinced that the premises of the American founding were either in accord with Catholicism, if not in fact shaped by Catholicism, or at least not hostile to the interests of Faith. This is what was taught to one generation of Catholics in the United States of America after another. Books were written by otherwise sound, orthodox priest-scholars who projected Catholicism into the minds of the anti-Catholic, naturalists who founded the United States of America and who were convinced that men could be "civically virtuous" on their own powers as they pursued the common good in the temporal real without reference to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.
What was thought by these bishops and priests to be a "protection" to the Faith, religious liberty, was, of course, an insidious trap laid by the devil to convince Catholics that the pluralistic civil state of Modernity was "irreversible" and that the "best" that Catholics could hope for in a world marked by "progress" and "progressive minds" was a "place at the table" with those who had different beliefs or ideas as efforts were made to conduct public life in a interdenominational or nondenominational manner. These Catholic bishops and priests in the United States of America believed that it was thus unnecessary to pray and to work for the confessionally Catholic civil state, although many of them, as a manner of strict intellectual honesty, were very much concerned about the conversion of individual souls to the true Church. It was thought that the framework of the American founding and the Constitution of the United States of America provided sufficient "freedom" for the Church to do her work of preaching the Gospel and sanctifying souls and that non-Catholic citizens of "good will" would work with Catholics in behalf of the common good.
This uncritical acceptance of the compatibility of the American founding principles with the true Faith helped to corrupt succeeding generations of Catholics, many of whom viewed the Church through the lens of "democracy" and "egalitarianism" and religious indifferentism rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith. In a world, you see, the heresy of Americanism (the exaltation of the American founding principles as perfectly compatible with the Faith) resulted in the triumph of the spirit of naturalism in the hearts and minds of many Catholics, a spirit that cuts across the lines of the false opposites of the naturalist "left" and the naturalist "right" and that cuts across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide at the present time. To speak about the confessionally Catholic state is considered to be "idealistic" or "unrealistic" in the minds of so many who are unwilling or unable to denounce the American founding principles and to proclaim firmly that true patriotism consists in the seeking of one's nation to the true Faith.
As we know, the counterfeit church of conciliarism has made its "reconciliation" with the principles of the modern civil state. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI considers the American paradigm of Church-State relations to be the model to be followed in the rest of the world, which places him in direct contradiction to Pope Leo XIII's declaration that the American system was not the one to be followed in the rest of the world, that the Church needs the recognition of the civil state, not simply the "freedom" to do her work in behalf of souls:
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 trying to explain to the American bishops that the growth of the Faith in the United States of America was not the result of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America but the product of the "fecundity with which God has endowed His Church." The Church will expand and propagate if men or circumstances do not interfere. This, however, is not enough. It is the ordained Will of God and thus part of the Deposit of Faith that the civil state must recognize the civil state and pursue public policy in light of man's Last End. This, however, has not been taught in the United States American and the fact that this has not been taught in the United States of America is one of the principal reasons that so many generations of Catholics, both clergy and laity alike, have a deformed view of the world and the Church's place in it.
Pope Leo XIII knew that his own encyclical letters were not being taught in this country, which is why he wrote the following in Longiqua Oceani:
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.
The American bishops did not this exhortation of Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua seriously. They did not respond positively to Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899. They proceeded to deform the souls of Catholics by convincing them that the American founding principles were perfectly compatible with Catholic Social Teaching and that it was not necessary to be confessionally Catholic in the realm of politics and public discourse. The path was thus laid for the triumph of the false ethos of conciliarism in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae at the "Second" Vatican Council.
One of the chief promoters of the Americanist spirit in the years leading up to that "Second" Vatican Council was none other than Richard Cushing, the Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts, from September 25, 1944, to November 2, 1970. Cushing enabled the family of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., at every turn and boasted before he died that he had never made a single convert in his entire forty-nine years as a priest. Along with his fellow Americanist and enabler of Democrat Party politicians, especially the thirty-third degree Mason named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Francis Cardinal Spellman, Cushing helped to undermine efforts on the part of the Catholic bishops in the American Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to oppose a referendum in support of "birth control" that was being pushed by mainland "population control" forces:
n 1960, the Puerto Rico hierarchy decided to make one last concerted effort to drive the Sangerite forces from the island. The Catholic resistance was lead by two American Bishops--James F. Davis of San Juan and James E. McManus of Ponce. The Catholic Church in Puerto Rico helped to organize a national political party--the Christian Action Party (CAP). The new political front was composed primarily of Catholic laymen and its platform included opposition to existing permissive legislation on birth control and sterilization.
When increasing numbers of CAP flags began to fly from the rooftops of Puerto Rico's Catholic homes, the leaders of the opposition parties, who favored turning Puerto Rico into an international Sangerite playground for massive U.S.-based contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization experimental programs, became increasingly concerned for their own political futures. Then unexpected help arrived in the unlikely person of His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York.
One month before the hotly contested national election, Spellman arrived in Puerto Rico ostensibly to preside over two formal Church functions. While on the island, Spellman agreed to meet with CAP's major political rival, Governor Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and a supporter of federal population control programs for Puerto Rico.
In an interview that followed his meeting with Munoz, Spellman, known for years as FDR's errand boy with a miter, claimed that politics were outside his purview. The cardinal's statement was interpreted by the press as an indictment of the partisan politics of Bishops Davis and McManus. To underscore his message, as soon as Spellman returned to the States he made a public statement in opposition to the latest directives of the Puerto Rico bishops prohibiting Catholics from voting for Munoz and his anti-life PDP cohorts. Catholic voters in Puerto Rico should vote their conscience without the threat of Church penalties, Spellman said.
Boston's Cardinal Cushing, John F. Kennedy's "political godfather," joined Spellman in expressed "feigned horror" at the thought of ecclesiastical authority attempting to dictate political voting. "This has never been a part of our history, and I pray God that it will never be!" said Cushing. Cushing's main concern was not the Puerto Rican people. His main worry was that the flack caused by the Puerto Rican birth control affair might overflow into the upcoming presidential campaign and hurt John Kennedy's bid for the White House.
The national election turned out to be a political disaster for CAP. Munoz and the PDP won by a landslide. Bishop Davis was forced to end the tragic state of confusion among the Catholic laity by declaring just before the election that no penalties would be imposed on those who voted for PDP.
Two years later, with the knowledge and approval of the American hierarchy and the Holy See, the Puerto Rican hierarchy was pressured into singing a secret concordat of "non-interference" in government-sponsored birth control programs--a sop being that the programs would now include instruction in the "rhythm method." While insisting on their right to hold and express legitimate opposition to such programs, the Puerto Rican bishops promised they would "never impose their own moral doctrines upon individuals who do not accept the Catholic teaching."
When the Sangerite storm hit the mainland in the late 1960s, AmChurch would echo this same theme song, opening the floodgates to a multi-billion dollar federal-life-prevention (and destruction) program. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 647-649)
Richard Cushing, cited in the passage above, made his own sordid contribution in the advancement of evil under cover of law, thereby indemnifying Catholics in public life that they were free to use their "consciences" to vote as they pleased on a bill pending in the Massachusetts General Court (the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) in 1965 to legalize contraceptives for married couples:
Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. . . . In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, 'An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,' and effectively scuttled the opposition. Cardinal Cushing announced: 'My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position upon those of other faiths'. Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that 'I could not in conscience approve the legislation' that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, 'I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others.' So there it was: the 'personally opposed' argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to 'impose' his opinion. Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. 'But my thinking has changed on that matter,' he reported, 'for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do'. . . . Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: 'If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church.' Dozens of Catholic legislators did vote for the bill, and the Birth Control law was abolished. Perhaps more important in the long run, the 'personally opposed' politician had his rationale." (Catholic World Report, 2003.)
Cushing's "thinking" had changed. The Rights of Christ the King never change. Never. A shepherd's responsibility to combat evil never changes, something that Pope Leo XIII made very clear in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:
Under such evil circumstances therefore, each one is bound in conscience to watch over himself, taking all means possible to preserve the faith inviolate in the depths of his soul, avoiding all risks, and arming himself on all occasions, especially against the various specious sophisms rife among non-believers. In order to safeguard this virtue of faith in its integrity, We declare it to be very profitable and consistent with the requirements of the time, that each one, according to the measure of his capacity and intelligence, should make a deep study of Christian doctrine, and imbue his mind with as perfect a knowledge as may be of those matters that are interwoven with religion and lie within the range of reason. And as it is necessary that faith should not only abide untarnished in the soul, but should grow with ever painstaking increase, the suppliant and humble entreaty of the apostles ought constantly to be addressed to God: "Increase our faith.''
But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.
The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error.
Richard Cushing believed that the members General Court [state legislature] of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could proceed on the birth control bill, which was sponsored by a state senator named Michael S. Dukakis, as they desired, that he had no duty to "instruct" them how to vote. This is what he believed, and this is one of the principal reasons that there are so many pro-aborts amongst Catholics in public life in the Bay State. And this is also one of the reasons that the grandchildren of the man, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., whom he enabled at every turn, are to a person, including Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg, who is now seek the seat in the United States Senate from the State of New York that will be vacated when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as the next Secretary of State, completely supportive of the evils of the day.
However, these pro-abort elected public officials in any wise be considered "Catholic!"
Mrs. Kennedy-Schlossberg, who is being muzzled by her "handlers" much in the same manner as Alaska Governor Sarah Heath Palin was muzzled by the handlers assigned to her by the campaign of her running-mate, United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, R-Arizona, provided the following written answers to a series of questions about her public policy positions posed to her by The New York Times that reveal her to be a true spiritual child of Richard Cushing and other Americanist prelates:
ALBANY— In just a few days, Caroline Kennedy’s bid to take Hillary Rodham Clinton’s place in the Senate has acquired nearly all the trappings of a traditional New York statewide campaign: A bevy of consultants, a tour of struggling upstate cities and television cameras tracking her every move.
Now Ms. Kennedy has added something else to the list: A platform—of sorts.
On Saturday, Ms. Kennedy’s spokesman provided written answers to fifteen questions posed last week by The New York Times. Most of the answers were brief. Some of them did not fully address the questions. And together they cover only a small part of the broad array of issues, from the parochial to the profound, that any New York senator is expected to grapple with.
But as Ms. Kennedy continues her effort to persuade Gov. David A. Paterson that she deserves the seat being vacated by Mrs. Clinton, who has been tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to be his secretary of state, the answers provide one of the first glimpses of her political ideology.
Asked if Ms. Kennedy had written the answers herself, her spokesman, Stefan Friedman, said: "These are Caroline’s positions. The responses were drafted by her and her staff."
Q. Does she support state or federal legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage?
A. Caroline supports full equality and marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
Q. Would she oppose legislation that would require minors to notify a parent before obtaining an abortion?
A. Caroline believes that young women facing unwanted pregnancies should have the advice of caring adults, but this should not be required by law.
Q. Does she support any state or federal restrictions on late-term abortions?
A. Caroline supports Roe v. Wade, which prohibits third-trimester abortions except when the life or health of the mother is at risk. (Q. and A.: Kennedy's Platform.)
These answers put Mrs. Kennedy-Schlossberg within the "mainstream" of Catholics in the State of New York who support these same evils while maintaining their "good standing" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Nothing will happen to her. Nothing has happened to the Catholic pro-abortion Governor of the State of New York, David Paterson, who will appoint the individual to replace the Methodist pro-abort Hillary Clinton in the United States Senate. Nothing has happened to the ethically challenged, thirty-degree Mason Catholic pro-abort named United States Representative Charles Rangel. Mrs. Kennedy Schlossberg will never be upbraided by her pastor at Saint Thomas More Church on the upper East Side of the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York. She will not be denied what purports to be "Holy Communion" in the Protestant and Masonic service known as the Novus Ordo. She will not be told by Edward "Cardinal" Egan, the conciliar "archbishop" of New York that she supports the mystical dismemberment of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of preborn children in their mothers' wombs. And her answers will not be considered in any way alarming by most Catholics in the State of New York as Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg shares with those Catholics a common line of spiritual ancestors who were to a man enemies of the Social Reign of Christ the King and who produced children of their spirit who view their own lives and the world in purely naturalistic terms.
Even some traditionally-minded Catholics in sedevacantist circles permit themselves to be deceived by the spirit of Americanism that was present in old textbooks and monographs on the American founding, refusing to think critically as to how these authors, no matter how orthodox they may have been in other areas of Catholic doctrine, were, as noted before, projecting Catholicism into the minds of the anti-Catholic naturalists who believed that the Faith was the enemy of "liberty" of men. The irony here is that many of these authors who lived in the early-Twentieth Century would have been full-throated supporters of Dignitatis Humanae had they lived as they, in life, believed that the "religious liberty" "guaranteed" by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was a "protection" to the Faith, ignoring entirely the abject condemnation of this heresy that treats the true religion and false religions equally and proclaims that blasphemers have a "civil right" to propagate their errors that were issued by pope after pope even after the founding of the United States of America.
Pope Pius VI condemned religious liberty as a "monstrous doctrine" in a brief entitled Quod aliquantum, March 10, 1791, that has been published recently on the Tradition in Action website:
The necessary effect of the constitution decreed by the Assembly is to annihilate the Catholic Religion and, with her, the obedience owed to Kings. With this purpose it establishes as a right of man in society this absolute liberty that not only insures the right to be indifferent to religious opinions, but also grants full license to freely think, speak, write and even print whatever one wishes on religious matters – even the most disordered imaginings. It is a monstrous right, which the Assembly claims, however, results from equality and the natural liberties of all men.
But what could be more unwise than to establish among men this equality and this uncontrolled liberty, which stifles all reason, the most precious gift nature gave to man, the one that distinguishes him from animals?
After creating man in a place filled with delectable things, didn’t God threaten him with death should he eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil? And with this first prohibition didn’t He establish limits to his liberty? When, after man disobeyed the command and thereby incurred guilt, didn’t God impose new obligations on him through Moses? And even though he left to man’s free will the choice between good and evil, didn’t God provide him with precepts and commandments that could save him “if he would observe them”? …
Where then, is this liberty of thinking and acting that the Assembly grants to man in society as an indisputable natural right? Is this invented right not contrary to the right of the Supreme Creator to whom we owe our existence and all that we have? Can we ignore the fact that man was not created for himself alone, but to be helpful to his neighbor? …
Man should use his reason first of all to recognize his Sovereign Maker, honoring Him and admiring Him, and submitting his entire person to Him. For, from his childhood, he should be submissive to those who are superior to him in age; he should be governed and instructed by their lessons, order his life according to their laws of reason, society and religion. This inflated equality and liberty, therefore, are for him, from the moment he is born, no more than imaginary dreams and senseless words. Pius VI, Brief Quod aliquantum, of March 10, 1791,
in Recueil des Allocutions, Paris: Adrien Leclere, 1865, pp. 53-55. (Religious Liberty, a 'Monstrous Right'.)
Pope Pius VI referred to "religious liberty" as a "monstrous right" and an "invented right" as well it is. This "invented right" has done monstrous things to the minds and souls of Catholics, clergy and laity alike, in the "free" United States of America, making it possible for the average Catholic to accept without any degree of amazement at all the answers given by Caroline Kennedy to The New York Times and to accept California Governor Edmund G. "Jerry" "Moonbeam" Brown's assertions, made as Attorney General Moonbeam of the State of California, that Proposition 8, a referendum to the California State Constitution passed by voters on November 4, 2008, to "define" marriage as between one man and one woman, is "unconstitutional" as a constitutional amendment cannot "undo" a "basic right" held by the people. Most Catholics just shrug their shoulders and consider these things to be but mere "matters of opinion, an attitude that is of the essence of Judeo-Masonry.
It would not occur to many Catholics in our land of pluralism to ask Attorney General Moonbeam from whence does the "right" emanate for those engaged in perversity to "marry" emanate? From God? From the Natural Law? From the California State Supreme Court? Many Catholics, infected by the Americanist spirit, do not realize that he "right" of those engaged in perverse acts contrary to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments to "contract marriage" is but an "invented right," representative of "imaginary dreams and senseless words" that must arise in any system of government where the Social Rights of Christ the King are denied. Satan and his pomps must reign supreme in land where Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ does not reign as King just as surely as he, our ancient adversary, must reign supreme in a soul that is in his grip by means of Original Sin or unforgiven Mortal Sin.
Pope Pius VI's successors, Pope Pius VII, also condemned religious liberty in no uncertain terms:
. For how can We tolerate with equanimity that the Catholic religion, which France received in the first ages of the Church, which was confirmed in that very kingdom by the blood of so many most valiant martyrs, which by far the greatest part of the French race professes, and indeed bravely and constantly defended even among the most grave adversities and persecutions and dangers of recent years, and which, finally, that very dynasty to which the designated king belongs both professes and has defended with much zeal - that this Catholic, this most holy religion, We say, should not only not be declared to be the only one in the whole of France supported by the bulwark of the laws and by the authority of the Government, but should even, in the very restoration of the monarchy, be entirely passed over? But a much more grave, and indeed very bitter, sorrow increased in Our heart - a sorrow by which We confess that We were crushed, overwhelmed and torn in two - from the twenty-second article of the constitution in which We saw, not only that "liberty of religion and of conscience" (to use the same words found in the article) were permitted by the force of the constitution, but also that assistance and patronage were promised both to this liberty and also to the ministers of these different forms of "religion". There is certainly no need of many words, in addressing you, to make you fully recognize by how lethal a wound the Catholic religion in France is struck by this article. For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me."
But We ought no less to wonder at and grieve over the freedom of printing guaranteed and permitted by Article 23 of the constitution; by which indeed the experience of past times itself teaches, if anyone could doubt it, what great perils and what certain poisoning of faith and morals are encouraged. For it is quite clear that it is principally by this means that, first, the morals of people were depraved, then their faith corrupted and overthrown, and finally seditions, riots and rebellions stirred up among them. Given the present state of great corruption of mankind, these most grave evils would still be an object of fear if - which may God prevent - the free power were permitted to anyone of publishing whatever he pleased. (Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814.)
Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, and Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, also condemned religious liberty in no uncertain terms, and by Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue.
There are some apologists for conciliarism's embrace of the heresy of "religious liberty" that was propagated by the American founding fathers and by the French Revolutionaries who contend that there is no "contradiction" between the Catholic Church's condemnation of this "invented right" that has done monstrous things in the past 232 years, that "progressive minds" can see a "continuity in discontinuity." A Catholic mind that cleaves to the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, Scholasticism, understands that the true popes of the Catholic Church were either correct or incorrect when they condemned "religious liberty," and the authority of the [First] Vatican Council teaches us dogmatically, solemnly and infallibly that the teaching of the Church can never be understood in any other way even if "progressive minds" claim that there have "advances" that make such a "new" understanding possible:
Hence, that meaning of the sacred dogmata is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be an abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.... If anyone says that it is possible that at some given time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmata propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has always understood and understands: let him be anathema. [Vatican Council, 1870.]
Richard Cushing and his spiritual children who have been shaped by the Americanist heresy responsible for "religious liberty" have indeed been anathematized by the authority of the Catholic Church for rejecting the binding nature of Catholic Social Teaching and Its condemnation of religious liberty and the separation of Church and State (see
The Binding Nature of Catholic Social Teaching). We have surgical abortion-on-demand in the United States of America in no small measure because so many Catholics are convinced that they can "love" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ while supporting His mystical dismemberment in the persons of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs as they accept the falsehoods of Modernity, born in time proximately by the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry that produced modern civil state and the falsehoods of Modernism that have emanated from the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
As has been noted so frequently on this site, there is no religiously indifferentist, interdenominational or nondenominational way to retard any social evils, which are, after all, the result of Original Sin and the Actual Sins of individual men, including each one of us. Social evils can only be lessened by the daily conversion of souls in cooperation with the graces won for us 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 and that flows into our our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Catholicism is indeed the one and only foundation of personal and social order, and the civil state has an obligation to recognize this fact as it makes public policy with a view to advancing the Last End of its citizens.
There are bumper stickers that remind us that "You Can't Be Catholic and Pro-Choice." True enough. More to the point, however, "You Can't be Catholic and Support the Separation of Church and State" that has made possible the killing of innocent preborn babies, both by chemical and surgical means, under cover of law. Each of the lords of conciliarism and their Americanist predecessors in the Catholic Church prior to the "Second" Vatican Council supported "separation of Church and State" and thus helped to beget children of a most perverse spirit that is hostile to the absolute rights of the Social Reign of Christ the King.
Today is the Transferred Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle in venues that follow a liturgical calendar that reflects none of the tamperings of Annibale Bugnini and Ferdinando Antonelli, tamperings that were, as it turns out, never approved by means of the personal signature of Pope Pius XII.
Saint Thomas the Apostle believed in the Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ because he put his finger in Our Lord's wounds on His hands and feet and put his hand in Our Lord's Wounded Side:
And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Jesus cometh, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said: Peace be to you. Then he saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered, and said to him: My Lord, and my God. Jesus saith to him: Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed (John 20: 26-29.)
Saint Thomas believed after his period of professed unbelief, suffering martyrdom in India because he refused to do what Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has done, venerate the symbols of the idols! We must mirror Saint Thomas's Faith, not his period of unbelief or the apostasy of men such as Ratzinger/Benedict, by accepting everything that the Catholic Church and being willing like him to preach the Gospel of Christ the King by word and by example.
Those of us who are parents and have begotten children of our flesh must instill in them the unwavering Faith of Saint Thomas after his period of unbelief ended. We must instill in our children a profound love of the Social Reign of Christ the King as we teach them to reject the lies of the naturalism of Modernity and the counterfeit church of conciliarism's Modernist "reconciliation" with those lies. Our children must never tire of hearing the glories of Christendom and we must never tire of exhorting them to plant seeds for its restoration as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And, most importantly, we must teach our children to maintain their childlike Faith in all that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour has revealed to His Catholic Church, including His Sacred Rights to reign over both men and nations, teaching them to pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.
Those of us who have begotten children of our flesh can pray as we inspire them to become begetters of children of their spirit by pursuing a vocation to the Priesthood or the consecrated religious life. We need to inspire our children to pursue a religious vocation to help to undo the legacy of "Cushing's children" who are immersed in the falsehoods of the world. We need to inspire our children to be faithful to the Catholic Church as they cleave into their adult years only to true bishops and true priests who are careful in their own priestly lives to teach the Deposit of Faith without any compromises at all to conciliarism and without any recognition accorded the wolves in shepherds' clothing of the One World Church. A child of ours who enters the religious life and begets children of their spirit who are faithful to Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen will help us to become grandparents, if you will, in spirit of countless numbers of souls. What a Christmas gift to give Newborn King through His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart!
Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote the following prayer for today's transferred feast:
A glorious apostle, Thomas! who didst lead to Christ so many unbelieving nations, hear now the prayers of the faithful, who beseech thee to lead them to that same Jesus, who, in five days, will have shown Himself to His Church. That we may merit to appear in His divine presence, we need before all other graces the light which leads to Him. That light is faith; then, pray that we may have faith. Heretofore, our Saviour had compassion on thy weakness, and deigned to remove from thee the doubt of His having risen from the grave; pray to Him for us, that He will mercifully come to our assistance, and make Himself felt by our heart. We ask not, O holy apostle! to see Him with the eyes of our body, but with those of our faith; for He said to thee, when He showed Himself to thee: 'Blesed are they who have not seen and have believed!' Of this happy number we desire to be. We beseech thee, therefore, pray that we may obtain the faith of the heart and will, that so, when we behold the divine Infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes and laid in a manger, we may cry out: 'My Lord! and my God!' Pray, O holy apostle, for the nations thou didst evangelize but which have fallen back again into the shades of death. May the day soon come, when the Sun of justice wilt once more shine upon them. Bless the efforts of those apostolic men, who have devoted their labours and their very lives to the work of the missions; pray that the days of darkness may be shortened, and that the countries, which were watered by thy blood, may at length see that kingdom of God established amongst them, which thou didst preach to them, and for which we also are in waiting.
May Our Lady help us in these final days of waiting in this Advent to be children of Christ the King, her Divine Son Who was born for us in poverty and anonymity and humility, and not the lords of Modernism or of Modernity.
O Key of David, and sceptre of the house of Israel! who openest, and no man shutteth: who shuttest, and no man openeth; come, and lead the captive from prison, sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.
May Our Lady help us to be led out of the prison of our own sins and selfishness and the lies of Modernity and Modernism as we are enlightened at all times by the Light Who is her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, King of men and their nations. May the day come soon when He is recognized by the Constitution of the United States of America as the King of this nation as He is of all nations.
Vivat Christus Rex!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
