Distracting Us With More Side Shows

Part Three

by Thomas A. Droleskey

One of the many ironies of the conciliar revolution is the almost total loss of the sensus Catholicus on the part of so many in the conciliar hierarchy and clergy and among the ordinary Catholics in the pew who bother to show up at the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service on Saturday afternoon/evening or on Sunday.

As has been noted so frequently on this site even before I came (yes, late in time, I realize) to recognize that those who defect from the Faith in even one thing defects from It in Its entirety and thus cannot hold ecclesiastical office in the Catholic Church legitimately, the conciliar revolutionaries sought to undermine and then obliterate the sensus Catholicus by accustoming Catholics to ceaseless changes in the liturgy even in the years prior to the implementation of the Novus Ordo service on Sunday, November 30, 1969, the First Sunday of Advent that year. Indeed, accustoming people to liturgical  change so as to get them to question their sensus Catholicus about the documents of the "Second" Vatican Council and the apostate words and actions of the conciliar "popes" and "bishops" was at the heart of the Ordo Missae of 1965 that was implemented on the First Sunday of Advent in 1964, November 30, exactly five years to the day before the implementation of the Novus Ordo itself.

The Ordo Missae of 1965 eliminated the recitation of Psalm 42 (Judica me) at the foot of the altar at the beginning of Holy Mass. The vernacular language could be used, except in the Canon of the Mass, which had to be prayed in Latin (until 1967, that is), if the priest desired. The Last Gospel, which had been mandated by Pope Saint Pius V when he issued the Missale Romanum of 1570, thereby codifying a de facto practice that had been observed by priests in many parts of Europe as a private devotion as they left the sanctuary at the conclusion of Holy Mass dating back to the Twelfth Century, was eliminated. The Leonine Prayers, which were made "optional" in the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that was promulgated by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII in 1961 (and changed in 1962 with the insertion of the name of Saint Joseph in the Canon of the Mass), were eliminated. The priest could also face the people, if he wished, a revolutionary change that became institutionalized universally in the life of Roman Rite Catholics attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism with the implementation of the Novus Ordo service on November 30, 1969.

The nature and the extent of the changes were bound to--and did in fact--bewilder many ordinary Catholics. This is why the following announcement was inserted into the parish bulletin of Saint Matthew's Church in Norwood, Ohio, a facility that is now Immaculate Conception Church, which operates under the auspices of the Society of Saint Pius V, to tell the sheep just to do what they were told as a revolution unfolded before their very eyes and with their own "full, active and conscious participation:"

Today is the First Sunday of Advent and the beginning of the Church's new liturgical year. Today we begin our "New Liturgy". Beginning today many parts of Holy Mass will be said in English. We ask each of you to do your very best to join the priest in the prayers of the Mass. Leaflets with the official text of these prayers were given most of your last Sunday. (For those of you who were unable to obtain your copies last Sunday, you may obtain one at the bulletin stands today.) For the Masses with singing (including the 9:45 a.m. High Mass), you are asked to use the cards found in the pews. Kindly stand, sit and kneel, according to the directions on your leaflet or the card. At the Masses today, seminarians will be on hand to help and guide you in this new participation. We wish to thank Msgr. Schneider, Rector of Mt. St. Mary's Seminary, for his kindness in sending us his students; and also the young men themselves for their generosity in helping us. We know that it will take a while (perhaps even months) before we have this new method of participating in Holy Mass perfected; we earnestly ask each one to cooperate loyally and faithfully to the best of his or her ability to make the public worship of God in St. Matthew Parish a true and worthy "sacrifice of praise." [Historical note: the Mount Saint Mary's Seminary referred to in the bulletin was known as Mount Saint Mary's Seminary of the West, located in Norwood, Ohio.]

 

The blitzkrieg of liturgical changes that took place from 1955 and thereafter institutionalized impermanence and instability in the lives of those Catholics who still bother to go to the Novus Ordo service, accustoming many of them to believe that doctrine can change just as easily and just as regularly as the liturgy. If we pray in novel ways then we are going to believe in novel things--and to be more readily disposed to accept novelties as being part of the normal life of the Catholic Church, which they are not. Indeed, the Catholic Church has condemned novelty and innovation, repeatedly, something that Pope Gregory XVI noted very clearly in Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834:

As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834.)

 

The counterfeit church of conciliarism has given Catholics a different liturgy, one that is offensive to God and harmful to souls.

The counterfeit church of concilairism has given Catholics a different language, one that has introduced ambiguity, contradiction and paradox to replace that of certainty and clarity by which the true popes of the Catholic Church and our true ecumenical councils. The Catholic Church brings her teaching forth clearly, something that Pope Pius XI explained very clearly in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928:

For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

 

One of the easiest teachings of the Catholic Church to understand is that she is the one, true Church. Every other religion is false and has no right or commission from the true God of Divine Revelation to exist, although their de facto existence may have to be tolerated by the civil state in order to preserve social peace and to refrain from doing violence to the conscience of others, who can never be forced to accept the true religion, Catholicism, something that must be accepted freely as those who abandon false religions publicly abjure their false beliefs once and for all. This is a teaching, however, that has been rejected very widely, at least on the level of pastoral praxis, by conciliar officials and laity alike.

Making False Parallels to Suit the Heresy of Religious Liberty

The New York Times is no friend of the Catholic Faith. Indeed, it is quite an enemy of the Faith and thus of a just social order premised upon a humble, docile submission to the binding precepts contained in the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to Holy Mother Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. There are times, however, when the editors of The Times (yes, pun most certainly intended) make alliances with various conciliar officials to promote its own "infallible" agenda that is supposed to connote contemporary "enlightenment" and "progress."

Such is the case as The New York Times continues to propagandize in behalf of what is commonly referred to as the "Ground Zero Mosque" as the conciliar pastor of oldest Catholic parish in the City of New York and in the State of New York finds a parallel between Protestant opposition to the founding of Saint Peter's Church at the end of the Eighteenth Century/beginning of the Nineteenth Century and the contemporary opposition to the Ground Zero mosque:

Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.

Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter.

But cooler heads eventually prevailed; the project proceeded to completion. And this week, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan — the locus of all that controversy two centuries ago and now the oldest Catholic church in New York State — is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone.

The Rev. Kevin V. Madigan, who is the pastor of St. Peter’s, said that when he began reading about the history of his church early this year in preparation for the anniversary on Tuesday, he was not initially struck by the parallels between the opposition it had faced and what present-day Muslims have encountered in proposing a community center and mosque near ground zero.

“There was no controversy when they first proposed it, and we were just pleased to have a new neighbor,” said Father Madigan, whose church, at Barclay and Church Streets, sits two blocks from 51 Park Place, the site of the proposed Islamic center. Both are roughly equidistant from the construction zone at ground zero.

But as an uproar enveloped the Islamic project over the summer, the priest said he was startled by how closely the arguments and parries of the opponents mirrored those brought against St. Peter’s in 1785.

Father Madigan detailed those similarities in a letter to parishioners over the summer, in two sermons at an interfaith gathering last month and at a special Mass last Sunday marking the church’s anniversary.

For starters, he said, there was the effort to move the planned church somewhere else.

City officials in 18th-century New York urged project organizers to change the church’s initial location, on Broad Street, in what was then the heart of the city, to a site outside the city limits, at Barclay and Church. Unlike the organizers of Park51, who have resisted suggestions they move the project to avoid having a mosque so close to the killing field of ground zero, the Catholics complied, although they had no choice.

Then there were fears about nefarious foreign backers. Just as some opponents of Park51 have said that the $100 million-plus project will be financed by the same Saudi sheiks who bankroll terrorists, many early Protestants in the United States saw the pope as the enemy of democracy, and feared that the little church would be the bridgehead of a papal assault on the new American government.

The Park51 organizers say they will not accept any foreign backing. But with about only 200 Catholics in New York in the late 1700s, most of them poor, St. Peter’s Church would not have been built without a handsome gift from a foreigner — and a papist at that — $1,000 from King Charles III of Spain.

The angry eruptions at some of the demonstrations this summer against the Muslim center — with signs and slogans attacking Islam — were not as vehement as those staged against St. Peter’s, Father Madigan said.

On Christmas Eve 1806, two decades after the church was built, the building was surrounded by Protestants incensed at a celebration going on inside — a religious observance then viewed by some in the United States as an exercise in “popish superstition,” more commonly referred to as Christmas. Protesters tried to disrupt the service. In the melee that ensued, dozens were injured, and a policeman was killed.

“We were treated as second-class citizens; we were viewed with suspicion,” Father Madigan wrote in his letter to parishioners, adding, “Many of the charges being leveled at Muslim-Americans today are the same as those once leveled at our forebears.”

The pastor said he respected the feelings of those who lost relatives or friends on 9/11. “They bear a grief that is inexpressible,” he said. Park51’s organizers, he added, would have to “make clear that they are in no way sympathetic to or supported by any ideology antithetical to our American ideals, which I am sure they can do.”

But he said Catholic New Yorkers had a special obligation. The discrimination suffered by their forebears, he said, “ought to be an incentive for us to ensure that similar indignities not be inflicted on more recent arrivals.” (Church Pastor Hears Echoes in Muslim Center Uproar.)

 

There are so many false parallels here that it is hard to know where to start. However, I will give it the old cyberspace try.

First, Protestants of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries had a far, far better understanding of the nature of Catholicism than did many Catholics. That is, the Protestants who opposed the building of Saint Peter's Church in lower Manhattan, then the heart of the City of New York, New York, understood that the Catholic Church taught that it was the one and only true Church. Many, although not all, Catholics in the United States of America at that time did not want to raise this truth. They simply wanted to practice their Faith "as quietly as possible," to use the words of a Jesuit priest when giving advice to Catholics who had arrived in the Colony of Maryland in 1634, after all of the persecutions that Catholics in the British Isles had been subjected since 1534. The thought of taking seriously what the Protestants knew should be the goal of Catholics--that is, to convert their nation to the true Faith--did not enter into the minds of most Catholics at the time. It was "enough" to practice one's religion in accord with the dictates of "religious liberty" just like everyone else.

American Protestants have long understood the true nature of Catholic Social Teaching better than most Catholics in this country. As noted in Cut From the Same Cloth thirty-five months ago now, a Protestant attorney, Charles Marshall, understood the binding nature of Quas Primas, issued by Pope Pius XI on December 11, 1925, better than the Governor of the State of New York, Alfred Emanuel Smith, who became the first Catholic nominated by a major political party in the United States of America when he received the 1928 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Charles Marshall wrote an excellent precis about Quas Primas in The Atlantic Monthly, demonstrating a keep grasp of the Catholic teaching that every nation has an obligation to recognize the Catholic Church and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End. Marshall disagreed most vehemently with this teaching. He did, however, understand it thoroughly and was attempting to put Smith on the spot as to his own views. Smith, relying upon his ghostwriter, Father Francis Duffy, the much decorated military chaplain of World War I, to provide a response in  The Atlantic Monthly that encyclical letters are not "articles of Faith," something that Pope Pius XII would put rest in paragraph twenty of Humani Generis, August 12, 1950 (see Appendix A below). In other words, Catholics in the United States of America knew better than the popes who came from Europe and had an "outdated" view of Church-State relations.

The contention made by Alfred Smith through the ghostwriting of Father Francis Duffy that encyclical letters are not articles of Faith flew in the face of the fact that Pope Leo XIII had upbraided the American bishops in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, for not teaching his encyclical letters on the state, which merely reiterated the immutable teaching that the civil state has an obligation to recognize the true religion and to accord her the favor and protection of the laws (see Appendix B below). It also flew in the face of what the then reigning Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XI, wrote in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, about the perpetually binding nature of Catholic Social Teaching on, among other things, Church-State relations:

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

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

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

 

This meant nothing to most Catholics in the United States of America in the 1920s. It means even less today as the conciliar "popes" have used their Hegelian sleight of hand by means of that philosophically absurd and dogmatic condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" to just wave their hands and dismiss the binding nature of that which has been taught perennially and can be no more changed than the doctrine of the Most Blessed Trinity, making, as always, the distinction between the teaching itself and the actual realities that may prevent it from being realized in a given state at a given time, especially in the anti-Incarnational era of Modernity in which we find ourselves. It is indeed ironic that some Protestants have had a far better understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches immutably than most Catholics in this country.

The Protestants of the late-Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, therefore, had every right to be concerned about the building of Saint Peter's Church in lower Manhattan as Catholicism is completely opposed to their false sects and wants their elimination as they themselves, the individual Protestants, are converted to the true Faith. That the Catholics of that time--and of our own time today--do not understand this is quite a telling commentary on the influence that Americanism has had over the years. Moreover, the counterfeit church of conciliarism rejects the necessity of seeking with urgency the unconditional conversion of Catholics to the true Faith and rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King, two of its principle apostasies. That adherents of false religions can be assured that Catholicism is "safe" for them is a sure sign that it is not authentic as a "safe" Catholicism is no Catholicism at all.

Secondly, the Catholics of the late-Eighteenth and early-Nineteenth Centuries had not engaged in the kind of killing spree in lower Manhattan that adherents of Mohammedanism did on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Mohammedanism is a false religion that wreaked death and destruction throughout the formerly Catholic region of North Africa starting in the Seventh Century and threatened to penetrate into the heart of Europe by violent means several times, including as late as the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571, and the Battle of the Gates of Vienna on September 12, 1683. The violence that occurred on September 11, 2001, was not atypical of a mythical "religion of peace" but an integral part of a false religion that is in the grip of the devil himself.

The man who tried to set off a bomb in Times Square in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York five months ago, Faisal Shahzad, expressed the goals of Mohammedanism very clearly when he was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment on Tuesday, October 5, 2010:

A Pakistani immigrant to the US who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square was sentenced today to serve a life term in prison.

District judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum said she hoped Faisal Shahzad spent some of his time behind bars thinking "carefully about whether the Qur'an wants you to kill lots of people".

Shahzad and the judge sparred repeatedly over his reasoning for giving up his comfortable life in the US to train in Pakistan and carry out a potentially deadly attack in the heart of New York City on 1 May.

Instead of exploding, however, his bomb, hidden in the back of a sports utility vehicle, made a sputtered sound. This attracted the attention of a street vendor, who alerted police. The discovery set off an evacuation of the area and an investigation which resulted in his arrest two days later as he sought to flee the country.

Under federal rules, the mandatory life sentence will keep Shahzad behind bars until he dies. After delivering it, Cedarbaum told Shahzad: "You appear to be someone who was capable of education, and I do hope you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Qur'an wants you to kill lots of people." Shahzad, 31, responded that the "Qur'an gives us the right to defend. And that's all I'm doing."

Earlier, Shahzad offered a lecture of his own for Americans, and said he felt no remorse for his actions.

He told them: "We are only Muslims …but if you call us terrorists, we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorising you." At another point, he said: "The defeat of the US is imminent."

Cedarbaum said her sentence was important "to protect the public from further crimes of this defendant and others who would seek to follow him".

During Shahzad's statement, Cedarbaum cut him off at one point to ask if he had sworn allegiance to the US when he became an American citizen last year.

"I did swear, but I did not mean it," said Shahzad, a former budget analyst from Connecticut who was born in Pakistan.

"So you took a false oath," the judge told him.

Shahzad demonstrated throughout the half-hour proceeding in Manhattan that he had not wavered in the months since June, when he pleaded guilty to 10 terrorism and weapons charges, some of which carry mandatory life sentences.

"I want to plead guilty and I'm going to plead guilty 100 times forward," he said in June.

On Tuesday, he picked up where he left off. "If I am given 1,000 lives, I will sacrifice them all for the life of Allah," he said at the start of a statement that lasted several minutes and was interrupted several times by the judge, who said she wanted to hear what he had to say about his sentencing.

He asked: "How can I be judged by a court that does not understand the suffering of my people?"

Shahzad, who last year received explosives training in Pakistan to prepare for his bombing attempt, said attacks on Americans would continue until the US left Muslim lands.

"We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have sharia law and freedom," Shahzad said.

Two deputy US marshals stood behind Shahzad throughout the sentencing.

Shahzad had instructed his attorney not to speak. When a prosecutor tried to speak, the judge told him it was unnecessary.

Asked by the judge whether he had any final words, Shahzad said: "I'm happy with the deal that God has given me." (Times Square bomb attempt man jailed for life.)

 

Faisal Shahzad knows his false religion very well, believing it to be the one and only true religion for which he is willing to spend the rest of his life in jail. He was willing to lie and kill to spread Mohammedanism around the world and to avenge the uncritical support that one presidential administration after another has given to the murderous policies of the State of Israel and as American men and women have been sent needlessly into Mohammedan countries to seek to end a terrorist threat that results in the worsening of that threat as American bombs and military campaigns kill innocent civilians and deprive them of their infrastructure, thus creating a breeding ground for more terrorists (which is, of course, exactly what the State of Israel has done as its murderous, amoral policies have recruited dozens of "martyrs" for Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon).

Catholicism, which happens to be the true religion, spread around the world without force. Unlike the diabolical false "prophet," Mohammed, Saint Peter did enter Rome with an army. Saint Paul was brought there as a prisoner to be executed according to Roman law as a Roman citizen. Over thirteen million Catholics went to their deaths rather than to deny the Faith and/or to place the idols of false religions on a plane of equality with that of the true Faith, Catholicism. To seek to analogize the rejection of Catholicism by Protestants with the rejection of a proposal to build a Mohammedan mosque on the site of a building that was demolished on September 11, 2001, is thus false and self-serving as it equates the Sacred Rights of the religion of true peace, that of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, with that of false religion that is violent of its very nature and which means to win by procreation and acts of terror what it lost in military battles up until now.

Thirdly, the principal proponent of the "Ground Zero mosque," Feisal Abdul-Rauf, has been exploiting this matter for his own purposes, using the heresy of religious liberty (termed a heresy by Pope Pius VII in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, and insanity by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832) to mainstream the false religion of Mohammedanism while at the same time maintaining close ties with militant groups in the Middle East who are intent on fomenting violence against Western interests. This is what I wrote two months ago in Mainstreaming Mosques:

Feisal Abdul-Rauf certainly has an agenda to mainstream Mohammedanism here in the United States of America. He is very deft at making the specious "distinction" between "radical Islam" and the "teachings" of the Koran, especially when one considers that there is no central authority within this false religion to impose upon all Mohammedans a particular "doctrinal" interpretation of the meaning of that blasphemous document. He is also not unaware that placing his Cordoba House project near the site of what Americans call "Ground Zero" in lower Manhattan will inflame passions, which he believes can provide him with a platform to "explain" his "true" intentions and those of his "religion of peace."

 

Places of false worship may be tolerated for the sake of civil peace. Feisal Abdul-Rauf and his backers have sought to exploit this issue and has done so quite successfully even as his own false religion rejects "religious liberty" and would impose strict controls on Catholics and others when the day comes that adherents of Mohammedanism become the majority in countries such as Germany and France and possibly even the United Kingdom itself if current demographic trends continue unchecked and there is no intervention from God to put this all to a stop by means of a major, catastrophic chastisement that would make the current chastisements, including the one that is about to be visited on the Hungarians by means of the toxic sludge spill in the Danube River, pale into insignificance by way of comparison.

The Catholics who sought to be build Saint Peter's Church in lower Manhattan did not wish to inflame passions. They were not making a "statement." There is absolutely no parallel, therefore, between the Protestant opposition to the building of Saint Peter's Church in lower Manhattan over two hundred years ago now and the opposition that has been engendered by the families of the victims of those killed on September 11, 2001. Such is the madness of Americanism's misbegotten stepchild, conciliarism, that those steeped in the conciliar structures must seek to find parallels where none exist so as to demonstrate themselves to be merchants of a religious liberty that has been condemned by true pope after true pope (see Appendix C below).

There Is Still Nothing New Under the Conciliar Sun

Although much is being made of the renunciation of the Social Reign of Christ the King by the conciliar "bishops" of Poland (see Polish "Bishops" Renounce the Social Reign of Christ the King), this is not really news at all. There is still nothing new under the conciliar sun.

The proposal to proclaim Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ at the honorary King of Poland is four years old. The original proposal by some Polish "bishops" at the time. It is thus not surprising that the following renunciation of the Social Reign of Christ the King, which is nothing other than a renunciation of the Catholic Faith, has come from the entire conference of conciliar "bishops" in the native country of a man, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, who rejected the Social Reign of Christ the King and thus demonstrated himself to have defected from Faith on this doctrine as he had in so many other ways:

Poland's bishops are against the idea of a popular movement for the Consecration of Poland to Christ the King -- who take as their Motto: "Christ, King of Poland".   This plan should be given up, said the president of the Polish Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Jozef Michalik, this Wednesday at the close of the Autumn Meeting of Bishops in Warsaw. The Kingdom of Christ is "not of this world".

In the concluding explanation the Bishops warn against the supposition, that the Enthronement of Christ as the King of Poland, "will solve all problems".   In place of this they propose, the deepening faith in Christ as the "King of the Universe". Michalik recognized the good intentions of the people's movement.

More than 1,000 people had demonstrated in Warsaw this weekend for a proclamation of Christ the King of Poland. They came with National flags and pictures of the Crowned Christ, King of Parliament from the Presidential Palace. "The Movement for the Sovereignty of the Polish People" had called this demonstration.

Already in 2006 the Church had criticized around 40 priests, who then proposing a Christ the King blessing of Poland. The proposal elicited no comment from the Parliament. The organizers explained that in 1656 Poland officially proclaimed the Mother of God as the "Queen of Poland". (see Polish "Bishops" Renounce the Social Reign of Christ the King.)

 

Give up this "plan," "Archbishop" Jozef Michalik? Give up the Faith. It is that simple as "this 'plan,'" as you refer to it is the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church.

What I wrote about this betrayal of the Catholic Faith and the Social Reign of Christ the King four years ago bears repeating once again:

Conciliarists take no rest from their work of betraying the Catholic Faith. Not even the days of the "O" antiphons, the days leading up to the commemoration of the Nativity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, are exempt from attacks upon the Deposit of Faith that He has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church. Those conciliarists who are, whether wittingly or unwittingly, spading the ground for the One World Church have lost almost the entirety of the sensus Catholicus, refusing to accept the simple truth that Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is meant be King not only of individual men but of each and every nation on the face of this earth without any exception whatsoever.

Thus it is, ladies and gentlemen, that we have been subjected in the past week to the incredible, although hardly unexpected, spectacle of conciliar bishops in Poland, a thoroughly Catholic country, denouncing an effort by members of the Polish parliament, the Sejm, to pass a resolution to proclaim Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to be the honorary King of Poland. This wonderful and noble effort on the part of the members of the Sejm to restore Our Lord to His rightful place in the country of Saint Stanislaus and Saint Hyacinth and Saint Casimir and Saint Hedwig is being mocked and ridiculed by the conciliar bishops. Here is the news story about this textbook example of the counterfeit conciliar church's rejection of the immutable teaching of the Social Reign of Christ the King, a teaching that is part of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church and thus protected by the charism of infallibility:

WARSAW, Poland — Lawmakers have drawn up a resolution naming Jesus Christ as the honorary king of Poland, but have failed to win support from the country's powerful Roman Catholic church.

Lawmakers for the ruling Law and Justice party and League of Polish Families as well as the opposition Peasants Party back the resolution, said Szymon Ruman, spokesman for parliamentary speaker Marek Jurek.

However, the proposal currently has the support of only 46 members in the 460-seat parliament, well short of the necessary 231 votes to pass. Ruman said the resolution would likely be voted on sometime after Jan. 1.

Backing from the church in this strongly Catholic country would be crucial for building support for the proposal, but on Wednesday several bishops criticized it, and said parliament should stay out of religious affairs.

"Let parliament deal with passing better laws that we need," Gdansk Archbishop Tadeusz Goclowski said.

"This kind of action, although it may stem from good will, sounds a bit like propaganda," said bishop Tadeusz Pieronk (Our Lord to be Named Honorary King of Poland.)

 

Propaganda, eh, "Bishop" Pieronk? Propaganda? Hmmm. Here is what Pope Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925:

Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ. It will call to their minds the thought of the last judgment, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults; for his kingly dignity demands that the State should take account of the commandments of God and of Christian principles, both in making laws and in administering justice, and also in providing for the young a sound moral education.

Yes, rulers and prices are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ, Who will "most severely avenge" the insults of His having "been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored." Was Pope Pius XI wrong, "Bishop" Pieronk, in reasserting the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the absolute social rights of Christ the King?

Once again, my friends, we are face to face with how directly the conciliarists dismiss the authentic patrimony of the Catholic Church as being irrelevant. Truth means nothing to these revolutionaries, content to engage in endless acts of positivism as they do away with all notion of the Church's infallibility by asserting, whether directly or indirectly, that every pope prior to 1958 was wrong--or that the "substantial anchorages" of truth by past popes have been "lifted" and placed down in a "different place" so as to appeal to the needs of "modern" man. Truth, however, does not change. The Author of all truth, the Blessed Trinity, is immutable. His truths are immutable. It is an immutable truth of the Catholic Faith that the Second Person of the Blessed made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb, Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, is meant to be King of all nations.

The very effort by some members of the Polish Sejm is exactly what Pope Pius XI called for in Quas Primas

If We ordain that the whole Catholic world shall revere Christ as King, We shall minister to the need of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities. This evil spirit, as you are well aware, Venerable Brethren, has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God's religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano; we lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.

Moreover, the annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them. While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.

 

There could not be a more stark contrast between the truths of the Catholic Faith, reiterated so eloquently by Pope Pius XI, and conciliarism's "reconciliation" with the "principles of 1789." The members of the Polish Sejm who are endeavoring to have Our Lord crowned as King of Poland are simply discharging their duties as Catholics. They know that the civil state must recognize the Catholic Church and to submit to her Divinely-instituted authority, exercised after the discharge of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, in all that pertains to the good of souls.

 

What more proof does one need to demonstrate that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church. Indeed, it was precisely because of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's repeated endorsements of the separation of Church and State, a thesis termed "absolutely false" by Pope Saint Pius X in Paragraph Three of Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, that I began to take a third and a fourth and a fifth look at the claims made by those who had concluded that the conciliar "popes" had expelled themselves from the Catholic Church by virtue of openly promoting propositions that have been condemned by our true popes and dogmatic councils.

"Give up this idea," "Archbishop" Jozef Michalik? Give up the Catholic Faith. Give up your false claim to representing the Catholic Church.

Read once again these words of Pope Pius XI:

While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.

 

"Give up this idea," "Archbishop" Jozef Michalik? We prefer death itself to giving up any part of Catholic doctrine, including the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King even though it might not be possible to realize it in any one place at a particular time in salvation history. No part of Catholic doctrine can be "given up." None. Ever.

Side Shows of Paradox and Contradiction

The crazy-quilt world of conciliarism is nothing if not wrapped in layers and layers of paradox and contradiction. This has been demonstrated amply on this site over the years. Just one example of this from the headlines of the past ten days or so will demonstrate this point yet again for those who have yet to be convinced of the madness in which the conciliar officials live and work.

The President of the Republic of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III, the son of the murdered Benigno Aquino II and the late President Corazon Aquino, was threatened with "excommunication" for accepting American foreign aid on the condition that he promote contraceptive pills and devices. Quite apart from this being yet another example of American population control imperialism and yet another assault upon The Philippines by the government of the United States of America that seized those islands in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and introduced Protestant "churches" and Masonic lodges into this Catholic land in the name of the hideous American concept of "civil liberty," thus taking untold numbers of people out of the true Church and quite possibly to their eternal perdition, that Benigno Aquino III would consider himself "free" to accept American aid with "population control" strings attached to it is yet another manifestation of just how bold Catholics in public life all over the world have become as a result of the failure of the American "bishops" to excommunicate pro-contraception, pro-abort Catholics in public life in this country (see Distracting Us With More Side Shows, part two).

Benigno Aquino III knew that nothing would happen to him for taking the American thirty pieces of silver. And nothing will happen to him despite  the incredible display of contradiction and paradox demonstrated in the following news reports, the first one of which discussed the possibility of Aquino's being "excommunicated" while the second one, published a day later, denied that such was a possibility at all. And some readers wonder why I get totally exasperated and frustrated with them when they get all excited and jump up and down at one news report that is inevitably to be contradicted almost as soon as it is published by some kind of denial or backtracking from a conciliar official!

I will provide the first report, dated October 1, 2010, followed by a brief comment upon it. The second report, dated October 2, 2010, will be pasted thereafter:

MANILA, Philippines — Raising the ante in their conflict over birth control, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president Thursday said President Benigno Aquino III could be “excommunicated” if he actively promoted the distribution of artificial contraceptives to Filipino couples.

Mr. Aquino, a practising Catholic, recently signified support for couples who would want to limit the number of their children by using contraceptives. His statement has been taken to mean he would favor government distribution of contraceptives to them.

“Being the President of all, you must consider the position of the Catholic Church because we are approaching this issue from the moral aspect,” the CBCP president, Bishop Nereo Odchimar, said on Church-run Radio Veritas.

“Abortion is a grave crime. Excommunication is attached to those. That is an issue of gravity, that is a violation of God’s commandment,” he stressed.

Asked if Mr. Aquino could be excommunicated if he promoted the distribution of contraceptives, the CBCP president said: “That is a possibility."

But Odchimar added: “Right now, it is not a proximate possibility.” He said, however, that “we will look into that.”

In an incident showing how birth control is an explosive issue, a popular tourist guide, Carlos Celdran, was arrested Thursday afternoon after shouting in front of the main altar of Manila Cathedral during an ecumenical service.

“Stop involving yourselves in politics!” Celdran—who was dressed up like Rizal, wearing a black suit with a top hat, on the day of his execution—screamed inside the cathedral.

Celdran held up a placard with the word “Damaso,” referring to the hated Spanish friar in Jose Rizal’s novel “Noli Me Tangere.”

Papal nuncio present

Among those present at the ceremony were the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Edward Adams, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, and other bishops, including those from other denominations.

The ecumenical service marked the second anniversary of the May They Be One Bible campaign, a joint effort by Catholics and Protestant leaders to distribute 5 million Bibles to 5 million poor Filipino families.

Excommunication, or denial of the sacraments to a person, is the harshest penalty the Roman Catholic Church can impose on erring members. In the past, it has excommunicated dictators Juan Peron of Argentina and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Mr. Aquino did not directly comment on the excommunication issue, saying in a statement that his position on family planning had not changed and that he continued to advocate for the government to provide couples an informed choice in planning their families.

“We are all guided by our consciences. My position has not changed,” the President said. “The state’s duty is to educate our families as to their responsibilities and to respect their decisions if they are in conformity to our laws.” (Aquino faces threat of excommunication.)

 

Consider the madness in all of this.

That is, the president of the Filipino "bishops'" conference threatens to excommunicate Benigno Aquino III for accepting American foreign aid on the condition that his government actively promotion contraception, which is a denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage, which is the not-so-hidden rationale behind the bill that Aquino is support to promote "birth control" (see Leading priest sees U.S. influence in Philippines president's support for contraception) while his brother "bishops" and the "papal" nuncio to his country participate in an "ecumenical" service filled to the rafters with ministers of false religions who support contraception! (I do not use exclamation points normally, preferring to let irony speak for itself in most instances. I am sorry that I have yielded to exasperation and have used two exclamation points in this article. Mea culpa! Oops, that was a third exclamation point. Yes, I get just a little worked up about these paradoxes that should demonstrate to most Catholics that the conciliar church is false, false, false as in false, false, false as in not from God.) Where is the logic of threatening to "excommunicate" Benigno Aquino III while smoking the "peace pipe," if you will, with those who dissent from numerous articles in the Deposit of Faith, including by supporting contraception, divorce and abortion? There is none.

The "proximate possibility" of the excommunication of President Bengino Aquino III of the Republic of the Philippines moved into the "remote possibility" category (as in it's never going to happen) just one day after "Bishop" Nereo Odchimar spoke of the matter:

After raising a firestorm of protests with his remark that Philippine President Benigno Aquino risked excommunication, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines on Friday (October 1) said the country’s highest Church body had not contemplated such an action.

CBCP president Bishop Nereo Odchimar denied having threatened Aquino with excommunication should he push for the use of artificial contraceptives to curb the population growth and address poverty.

Odchimar mentioned the possibility of Aquino facing excommunication in an interview Thursday on Church-run Radio Veritas.

His remarks were carried not only in the national media but also reported in the Catholic news service UCAN, a website featuring news about the Catholic Church, with editorial headquarters in Bangkok.

The UCAN story, like that of the Inquirer, also carried the headline: “Bishops threaten Aquino with excommunication".

The UCAN story led off with the paragraph: “The Catholic Church may excommunicate President Benigno Aquino III if he pushes through with a plan to distribute contraceptives, says the head of the Philippine bishops’ conference.”

The news service has a Jesuit priest, Father Michael Kelly SJ, as executive director and has offices or bureaus in 20 Asian countries.

In his statement Friday, Odchimar maintained the Catholic Church wanted to address reproductive health issues “in the spirit of dialogue and not of confrontation”.

“While the prevailing sentiment of a number of bishops was that of dismay and frustration over the reported stance of the President regarding artificial contraceptives, imposition of the canonical sanction has not been contemplated by the CBCP,” Odchimar said.

“Threat of excommunication at this point of time can hardly be considered to be in line with dialogue,” the bishop said.

It was Odchimar himself who raised the issue of excommunication as a sanction in an interview on Radio Veritas on Thursday.

Asked what his message to Aquino was, Odchimar said the President should consider the Church’s position on birth control, adding that abortion was a grave crime and “excommunication is attached to those who commit abortion”.

Asked if Aquino could be excommunicated if he promoted the use of contraceptives, the bishop replied, according to a transcript provided by the radio: “That is a possibility”.

Pressed on the matter, Odchimar said that “it is not a proximate possibility... we are open to dialogue”.

The Inquirer carried his qualification in its Thursday editions. (Bishops deny threatening Philippine President with excommunication.)

 

Just a misunderstanding?

Sure.

The "misunderstanding" began on October 28, 1958, when a pretender to the papal throne started the madness that became conciliarism with all the "fullness" of its apostasies and sacrileges that have been laid bare for all to see, apostasies and sacrileges that have scandalized and mis-catechized Catholics and non-Catholics alike, causing many Catholics to lose the Faith altogether to join one Protestant sect or another for a semblance of what they think is Christianity.

Enough of the side shows.

As I have noted repeatedly, this will all past. We must remain firm in the Faith without making any concessions to conciliarism. Those who want to see this will do so. Those who won't will continue to believe as I did for far, far too long (to my utter shame) that the Catholic Church can give us errors and liturgies that are incentives to impiety.

We must continue our efforts to grow in sanctity, being ever ready to die in a state of Sanctifying Grace at all times, praying our daily Rosaries to make reparation for our sins as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

This will all pass. Our Lady's Fatima Message will be fulfilled. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will reign again over men and their nations.

Who says so?

Why, Our Lord Himself, who spoke the following words to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque:

"I will reign in spite of all who oppose Me." (quoted in: The Right Reverend Emile Bougaud. The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 1990, p. 361.)

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Francis Borgia, S.J., pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix A

Pope Pius XII on the Binding Nature of Papal Encyclical Letter

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Appendix B

Pope Leo XIII Reminding The American Bishops of their Duty to Teach His Social Encyclical Letters

As regards civil affairs, experience has shown how important it is that the citizens should be upright and virtuous. In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied with the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs. On this whole subject there are to be found, as you know, in the encyclical letters written by Us from time to time in the course of Our pontificate, many things which Catholics should attend to and observe. In these writings and expositions We have treated of human liberty, of the chief Christian duties, of civil government, and of the Christian constitution of States, drawing Our principles as well from the teaching of the Gospels as from reason. They, then, who wish to be good citizens and discharge their duties faithfully may readily learn from Our Letters the ideal of an upright life. In like manner, let the priests be persistent in keeping before the minds of the people the enactments of the Third Council of Baltimore, particularly those which inculcate the virtue of temperance, the frequent use of the sacraments and the observance of the just laws and institutions of the Republic. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

Appendix C

Statements of Our True Popes Condemning Religious Liberty

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." (Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814)

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.

Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

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

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

And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)