Darkened Souls Can Be Made White As Snow
by Thomas A. Droleskey
There are few more despicable naturalists in public life than the Governor of the State of New York, Elliot Spitzer. A foul-mouthed, arrogant and abrasive advertisement for all that is wrong in souls that are steeped in the ravages of Original Sin and unrepentant Mortal Sins, Elliot Spitzer climbed his way into public prominence in large measure by persecuting crisis pregnancy centers when he was the Attorney General of the State of New York in the year of 2002. His actions in this regard, which were really nothing more than a rehash of the same misuse of the office of Attorney General of the State of New York that had been undertaken by one of his predecessors, Robert Abrams, were reprehensible. Although he issued subpoenas to twenty-four crisis pregnancy centers, Spitzer withdrew those subpoenas following a barrage of bad press. Spitzer had made his "points" with NARAL Pro-Choice America. He did not need to proceed with the bogus "investigation."
This is what I wrote at the time just about six years ago now at a time that I still believed that it was important to stop the "bad guys" in the voting book, a notion about which I was disabused in 2004 once and for all. All of the naturalists are bad!
It does not take a doctorate to recognize that "liberals" are among the most fascistic of people. The very people who claim to be champions of freedom give others the freedom only to agree with them. Anyone who disagrees with their "received teaching" must be denounced by the use of all manner of slogans. Indeed, those who dissent from cultural orthodoxy experience a sort of "excommunication" from various "privileges" extended to them by our prevailing cultural elite, sometimes including employment. The irony of this is very plain to see: those who incant slogans do not believe in them, as they are as autocratic and dictatorial as they claim the ones whose "intolerance" they oppose are alleged to be. Liberals, who are relativists and positivists, believe that they alone have the authority and the right to define the terms of social debate, no less the very meaning of the words used in such debate.
Case-in-point: State of New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. As I mentioned in last month's issue of Christ or Chaos , Spitzer, who is up for reelection this year, has begun to harass Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the State of New York, focusing in particular on centers that are run by Christopher Slattery, who has dedicated the better part of the past two decades to helping women bring their unborn children to birth (and then to help to provide them with the means to support those children or to arrange for their adoption by loving couples). Spitzer is not ploughing new ground. No, he is merely going over the same ground ploughed in 1987 and 1988 by one of his predecessors, the notorious and nefarious Robert Abrams. Using the model devised by Abrams, Spitzer is claiming that Crisis Pregnancy Centers in se lie to women and therefore deprive them of their "right to choose" an abortion, especially by "pressuring" women with the sort of information that "frightens" them into giving birth rather than making "an informed choice" to "terminate their pregnancies."
Herein lies Spitzer's typical pro-abortion and liberal hypocrisy and fascism: how is a woman supposed to "choose" rationally when she is not informed about the specific nature of a surgical procedure which kills her unborn child and places herself in medical risk? Of course, no one has the right to "choose" to kill any innocent human life from the first moment of fertilization through all subsequent stages until natural death. Granted.
However, those who claim to be advocates of choice do not want women to choose rationally at all. They want women to act on impulse. And the first impulse of many women who have been convinced by the instructors in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments to commit sins of unchastity outside of marriage is to consider killing the fruit of their wombs as a result of their belief that our laws make such killing morally acceptable.
So-called family planning agencies, such as Planned Parenthood, do not offer "counseling" about the true nature of abortion. Abortionists do not do so. Women who seek out "counseling" and "advice" from pro-abortion agencies and actual abortionists are encouraged to kill their children as soon as they can. Pro-aborts have done everything imaginable to defeat "informed consent" legislation in state legislatures and in the courts. The very people who scream bloody murder when women are not informed about the consequences of some alleged threat to their health caused by environmental or industrial pollution do not want women informed about the true nature of abortion (and its multifaceted physical and emotional ramifications) precisely because they favor bloody murder.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers have offered real information to expectant mothers. Thousands of babies are alive today as a result of the love and generosity and support and hope offered to anxious women who have been on the verge of killing their children. Sure, some women entered Crisis Pregnancy Centers not knowing that they would be counseled to choose life rather than to deal death. How many women know the true agenda of Planned Parenthood, for example? Do not many women seek out Planned Parenthood without realizing the pressure they will receive from its employees to kill their children, no less to consider being sterilized as well? Although those of us who are pro-life know full well the true history of Planned Parenthood from its founding as the Birth Control League by the racist and eugenicist Margaret Sanger, the average person, including the average teenager, does not know anything other than that Planned Parenthood "is there" for them when they have an "unplanned" pregnancy. Even married women, especially those who come from Latin America, are pressured to use contraception or to accept sterilization.
Expectant mothers seeking "help" from a Planned Parenthood "clinic" are not receiving assistance from dispassionate observers of this country's social scene. No, they are being pressured to have an abortion, being told in most instances of the horrible effects of carrying a pregnancy to term would have on their lives (trap them in poverty, burden them with the care of a child when they could be pursuing a career, impede their social lives). An honest attorney general of a state would investigate and seek to shut down all so-called "family planning" clinics for dishonesty by the use of very manipulative pressure tactics and for medical malfeasance by the withholding of information which, if withheld from a patient in all other medical procedures, would be the grounds for actual malpractice lawsuits.
As I noted last month, however, the fact that Elliot Spitzer is in power is the result of his predecessor's lack of moral courage. Former Attorney General Dennis Vacco, who was defeated by Spitzer very narrowly in 1998, refused to take the New York State Right to Life Party endorsement, taking the advice of then U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato that the Right to Life endorsement would be a political liability for him in a tight race. As it turned out, Vacco's lack of courage resulted in his defeat. He would have earned enough votes on the Right to Life Party line to put him ahead of Spitzer. How sad it is that establishment pro-lifers in New York did not seek to persuade Vacco to ignore D'Amato and the fully pro- abortion Catholic Republican governor of the State of New York, George Pataki, and take a visible, public stand in behalf of the babies and their mothers.
"He who is ashamed of Me and My doctrine before men, I will be ashamed of before My Father in Heaven." Vacco was ashamed of the pro-life position, thus enabling Spitzer to get elected -- and to thereby use the pulpit of New York attorney general to pummel and harass loving, selfless, giving volunteers who take seriously the words of the Divine Redeemer: "Whatsoever you do to the least of My brethren, that you do unto Me."
Spitzer is using this issue to help his reelection this year. However, it will be interesting to see whether the pro-abortion Republican Party in the State of New York will nominate a candidate who will oppose Spitzer's persecution of Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the general election this fall. A candidate unwilling to oppose Spitzer forcefully on this issue is unworthy of the votes of pro-lifers, for a person unwilling to oppose evil in a campaign will never do so once in office. He will continue Spitzer's policies lest he run afoul of the pro- abortion movement, which never hesitates to use its political clout to support only those candidates who are completely pro-abortion, raising the question once more as to why pro-lifers are so reluctant to support only those candidates who are completely and unqualifiedly pro-life. As I have noted so frequently, the more we enable the so-called lesser of two evils, the higher and higher the dose of that lesser evil becomes over time. ("No Choice at All," from the printed pages of Christ or Chaos, 2002.)
Elliot Spitzer is not only a unrepentant supporter of baby-killing. He has publicly supported the "right" of those stepped in perversity in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments to "marry." He is a liar, having not told the truth about a multi-million dollar loan his father, Bernard Spitzer, made to his first campaign for Attorney General of the State of New York in 1998. He is an abuser of the powers of his office, fostering a culture of arrogance that extended to his first days as Governor of the State of New York in 2007, authorizing his aides to engage in secret surveillance of State Senator Joseph Bruno, a Republican who is the Majority Leader of the New York State Senate. Elliot Spitzer brooks no opposition, seeks to crush his political opponents (using an unprintable expletive to describe himself as a "steamroller" in early-2007), and sought to make New York State drivers' licenses available to illegal immigrants. He is not a nice man. He is, indeed, a thoroughly despicable and reprehensible human being who is despised even by many of his fellow pro-abortion, pro-perversity Democrats!
Elliot Spitzer, an adherent of Talmudic Judaism, has been enabled by the nefarious conciliar "archbishop" of New York, Edward "Cardinal Egan, who praised Spitzer during a Novus Ordo service at Saint Patrick's Cathedral on September 11, 2002, "for all that he does for the people of New York," just a matter of months after Spitzer's efforts to persecute crisis pregnancy centers, which followed the aforementioned Robert Abrams's own persecution of these centers in 1987 and by Republican Dennis Vacco in 1995 (see
No Room for Christ at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, September 11, 2002). Spitzer was also an invitee of the "Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick at their annual Saint Patrick's Day dinner in 2003 (see To Honor Saint Patrick), demonstrating once again the complete bankruptcy of Catholics in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism., many of whom actually voted for this reprobate in the 2006 gubernatorial elections in the State of New York.
The reprobate has been reprobated, however. The man who was referred to as "the future of the Democratic Party" by State of New Mexico Governor and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, yet another pro-abortion Catholic in public life, in 2005 is mired in a scandal that is too tawdry to describe on this site. This has pleased many of his Democrat Party enemies no end, although the man who would succeed Spitzer in the event he resigns the New York governorship is Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, yet another pro-abortion Catholic who remains in perfectly "good standing" canonically within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite his support for baby-killing and embryonic stem-cell research, has lied repeatedly about the details of his own life.
A naturalistic response to all of this would be utter joy in seeing a reprobate reprobated, a dirty-mouthed, mean-spirited supporter of every evil imaginable "getting his" at long last. There is a special irony in that Spitzer addressed the press yesterday, Monday, March 10, 2008, after having canceled an address to a gathering of "family planning" advocates!
We are not naturalists, however. We are Catholics. We think supernaturally. We will the good of each man, no matter how unrepentant he may for his support for and participation in various evils, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of his immortal soul. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ loves Elliot Spitzer. He died for Him, shedding every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem his immortal soul, which has been made in the very image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity Himself.
Our Lord does not want us to "gloat" in the sins of Elliot Spitzer. Gloating about the sins of others is a sin in and of itself, and a very grave at that. Our Lord wants us to pray for the conversion of Elliot Spitzer, and it is sometimes the case that those who are humiliated by the public exposure of their sins are most open to listening to truths about First and Last Things that they had theretofore dismissed so contemptuously. Is such a conversion likely in the case of Elliot Spitzer? Only God knows.God is indeed just, and the rod of His justice, which can strike swiftly and without any notice all, is meant to lead men to repentance. God has true compassion for sinners as He exhorts them to quit their sons at the same time He is willing to extend them His ineffable Mercy if only they have the humility to seek it out where it can be found in His true Church
We must, therefore, pray for Elliot Spitzer. God wants Him in Heaven for all eternity with Him. He wants Elliot Spitzer and his wife to convert, to become members of the Catholic Church, to have their darkened souls become as white as snow by means of their being baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, thereby freeing their souls from captivity to Original Sin and remitting all of the temporal punishments due because of their Actual Sins:
Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from my eyes: cease to do perversely, Learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow. And then come, and accuse me, saith the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool.If you be willing, and will hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the land. But if you will not, and will provoke me to wrath: the sword shall devour you because the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. (Isaias 1: 16-20.)
A newly baptized soul is closer to God than the angels! The annals of salvation history are replete with examples of notorious sinners and actual enemies of the Church converting to the true Faith. Does the name Saul of Tarsus sound familiar?
For I give you to understand, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For neither did I receive it of man, nor did I learn it; but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion: how that, beyond measure, I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it. And I made progress in the Jews' religion above many of my equals in my own nation, being more abundantly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased him, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace,
To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, immediately I condescended not to flesh and blood. Neither went I to Jerusalem, to the apostles who were before me: but I went into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus. Then, after three years, I went to Jerusalem, to see Peter, and I tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles I saw none, saving James the brother of the Lord. Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not.
Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ: But they had heard only: He, who persecuted us in times past, doth now preach the faith which once he impugned: And they glorified God in me. (Galatians 1: 11-24.)
We do not need to descend to the details of the horror of the sins of others. The details of the horror of our sins are sufficient for us to dwell upon and to express our remorse for in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance as we seek to live penitentially as the consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Perhaps someone might be good enough to tell Elliot Spitzer that he has a Blessed Mother who is praying for his conversion, praying that he will weep for his sins and then to seek out conversion to the true Faith at the hands of a true bishop or a true priest (the inimitable Father Joseph Collins is right down the road from the Executive Mansion in Albany, New York, serving as pastor at Saint Michael's Chapel in Glenmont, New York).
Father Frederick Faber has provided us with a few words to remind us that we must have a spirit of reparation at all times:
Then, last of all, a continual spirit of reparation must preside over all our devotion, a reparation which is the immediate growth of familiarity, or rather which is the loving familiarity itself., with its eye resting on the reverence out of which all our devotion springs. To the devout mind Jesus habitually presents Himself as one who has not got His rights. He is injured and wronged with every heightening circumstance of pathetic injustice. There is not time when love pours itself out from the deepest and purest fountains of the heart with more self-abandonment than when the object of our love has been wronged. The very thought is so pitiable that it creates new love, such love as we never felt before, and the spirit of self-sacrifice beats in it like a heart. It is no longer a mere private joy of our own, a luxury of sentiment, a romance of feeling, which, while it enveloped the object of our love, reflected also no little radiance back upon ourselves. Self is more at home in love han in any other of the affections. It is an humbling and unpoetical truth, but nevertheless a truth. Now, the position of being wronged invests the object of our love with a kind of sanctity. Affection assumes something of the nature of worship, and then self can live there no longer, because worship is the only real incompatibility with self. Hence it is that the love of reparation is a pure and unselfish, and disinterested love. But this is not all. Jesus not only habitually presents Himself to us as one who is suffering, because He is defraud of His rights, but also of one who is in some mysterious way dependent upon our compassion to console Him, and upon our reparation to make good His losses. This adds tenfold more tenderness to our love, and self returns again, but only in the shape of sacrifice, of generosity, of work, of sorrow, of abandonment. The spirit of reparation is a beautiful spirit, a spirit of human beauty fit to wait on the Humanity of our dearest Lord. It is the true Mary's lap within our souls, in which the Blessed Sacrament should ever lie, the pure white corporal of our most disinterested love!
Such should be our devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, as taught us by our Mother ministering to the Body of Jesus on the top of Calvary. It should consist of reverence, tranquility, love, familiarity, and reparation, rising out of each other in this order, and connected with each other in the supernatural logic of a devotional spirit. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in 1857 in England under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 322-322.)
Our Lady's Fatima Message is all about reparation for sinners, is it not? Francisco Marto prayed and prayed Rosary after Rosary to "console the good God" and to make make reparation for his own sins and those of the whole world. Should not we? Should not we, having turned away from our evil deeds, even Venial Sins, in our last confession, help others such as Elliot Spitzer to live for all eternity in the glory of the Beatific Vision by means of our prayers and penances and mortifications and sufferings and humiliations given to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary:
But if the wicked do penance for all his sins which he hath committed, and keep all my commandments, and do judgment, and justice, living he shall live, and shall not die. I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done: in his justice which he hath wrought, he shall live. Is it my will that a sinner should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should be converted from his ways, and live? But if the just man turn himself away from his justice, and do iniquity according to all the abominations which the wicked man useth to work, shall he live? all his justices which he hath done, shall not be remembered: in the prevarication, by which he hath prevaricated, and in his sin, which he hath committed, in them he shall die. And you have said: The way of the Lord is not right. Hear ye, therefore, O house of Israel: Is it my way that is not right, and are not rather your ways perverse?
For when the just turneth himself away from his justice, and committeth iniquity, he shall die therein: in the injustice that he hath wrought he shall die. And when the wicked turneth himself away from his wickedness, which he hath wrought, and doeth judgment, and justice: he shall save his soul alive. Because he considereth and turneth away himself from all his iniquities which he hath wrought, he shall surely live, and not die.And the children of Israel say: The way of the Lord is not right. Are not my ways right, O house of Israel, and are not rather your ways perverse? Therefore will I judge every man according to his ways, O house of Israel, saith the Lord God. Be converted, and do penance for all your iniquities: and iniquity shall not be your ruin.
Cast away from you all your transgressions, by which you have transgressed, and make to yourselves a new heart, and a new spirit: and why will you die, O house of Israel? For I desire not the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God, return ye and live. (Ezechiel 18: 21-32.)
But if thou tell the wicked man, that he may be converted from his ways, and he be not converted from his way: he shall die in his iniquity: but thou hast delivered thy soul. Thou therefore, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: Thus you have spoken, saying: Our iniquities, and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them: how then can we live?
Say to them: As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way, and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways: and why will you die, O house of Israel? Thou therefore, O son of man, say to the children of thy people: The justice of the just shall not deliver him, in what day soever he shall sin: and the wickedness of the wicked shall not hurt him, in what day soever he shall turn from his wickedness: and the just shall not be able to live in his justice, in what day soever he shall sin. Yea, if I shall say to the just that he shall surely live, and he, trusting in his justice, commit iniquity: all his justices shall be forgotten, and in his iniquity, which he hath committed, in the same shall he die. And if I shall say to the wicked: Thou shalt surely die: and he do penance for his sin, and do judgment and justice, And if that wicked man restore the pledge, and render what he had robbed, and walk in the commandments of life, and do no unjust thing: he shall surely live, and shall not die.
None of his sins, which he hath committed, shall be imputed to him: he hath done judgment and justice, he shall surely live. (Ezechiel 33: 9-16.)
We may not be given to know the fruit of our prayers and acts of reparation as we live in this passing, mortal vale of tears as members of the Church Militant on earth. The people for whom we offer our prayers and acts of reparation may resist the graces sent to them through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to convert. We have nothing to fear. Our Lady will direct the fruit of those prayers to some other deserving soul. No prayer is ever wasted. None. Ever. At any time.
Each soul for whom we pray is worth every effort. After all, that soul, like ours, has been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and is thus dear to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, she who stood so valiantly at the foot of the Cross, is it not? We must pray ceaselessly, pray without looking for results, pray without expecting consolation in this life, pray our Rosaries with confidence that the Spiritual Works of Mercy we perform in this life for other might just cancel out the debt of a multitude of our sins, please God and by her maternal intercession we persist until the end in states of Sanctifying Grace, for we have been purchased at quite a price:
Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? And he shall grow up as a tender plant before him, and as a root out of a thirsty ground: there is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of him: Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth. He was taken away from distress, and from judgment: who shall declare his generation? because he is cut off out of the land of the living: for the wickedness of my people have I struck him. And he shall give the ungodly for his burial, and the rich for his death: because he hath done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in his mouth. And the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity: if he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in his hand.
Because his soul hath laboured, he shall see and be filled: by his knowledge shall this my just servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I distribute to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he hath delivered his soul unto death, and was reputed with the wicked: and he hath borne the sins of many, and hath prayed for the transgressors. (Isaias 53: 1-12)
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
