Do You Hear the People Sing?

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Courfeyrac:
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Les Miserables--Do you hear the people sing?

Do you hear the people sing?

 

The French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man, which is still recognized by the preamble of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic of France (adopted fifty years ago this year), helped, along with the American Declaration of Independence, which is a religiously indifferentist document that refers to God in generic, Judeo-Masonic terms, to enshrine the "reign of man" as the ultimate replacement for the Social Reign of Christ the King. Certainly, as has been noted on this site on many occasions, the Protestant Revolt against the Divine Plan that God Himself had instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church helped to pave the way for this revolutionary "reign of man." The twin revolutions of 1776 and 1789 (and the subsequent French Revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1871), however, helped to institutionalize the triumph of the false concept of the "sovereignty of the people" over that of Christ the King as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church. Naturalism and anti-Theism have been the logical consequences of these anthropocentric revolutions, and there is no "electoral" way by which the evil effects of these revolutions is going to be reversed.

Father Denis Fahey, writing in his The Kingship of Christ and the Conversion of the Jewish Nation, explained that we cannot be neutral in the battle between the reign of man and the Social Reign of Christ the King:

We can thus easily see that the entrance of Christianity into the world has meant two things. Primarily and principally, it has meant the constitution of a supernatural society, the Mystical Body of Christ, absolutely transcending every natural development of culture and civilisation. Secondly, it has had as result that this supernatural society, the Catholic Church, began to exercise a profound influence upon culture and civilisation and modified in a far-reaching way the existing temporal or natural social order. The indirect power of the Church over temporal affairs, whenever the interests of the divine life of souls are involved, presupposes, of course, a clear distinction of nature between the ecclesiastical authority, charged with the care of divine things, and the civil authority, whose mission is concerned with purely temporal matters. In proportion as the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind, political and economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, endowed, as she is, with the right of intervention in temporal affairs whenever necessary, because of her participation in the spiritual kingship of Christ. Thus the natural or temporal common good of states came to be sought in a manner calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ, and social life came more and more under the influence of the supreme end of man, the vision of God in the three divine Persons.

Accordingly, the divine plan for order in our fallen and redeemed world comprises, primarily, the supernatural social organism of the Catholic Church, and then, secondarily, the temporal or natural social order resulting from the influence of Catholic doctrine on politics and economics and from the embodiment of that influence in social institutions. From the birth of the Catholic Church on Calvary and the solemn promulgation of her mission at the first Pentecost, the Kingdom of God in its essence has been present in the world. As a result of the gradual acceptance of the role of the Church by the temporal representatives of Christ the King, the social institutions of states and nations became deeply permeated with the influence of the supernatural life of Christ. Then, and only then, could the Kingdom of God in its integrity or the rule of Christ the King in its integrity, be said to exist. The Kingdom of God or the rule of Christ the King is present in its integrity only in so far as the whole social life of states, political and economic, is permeated with the influence of the Church. To put it in other terms, Christ fully reigns only when the programme for which He died is accepted as the one true way to peace and order in the world, and social structures in harmony with it are evolved.

The Kingdom of God in its essence is always with us, but the influence of the Church on politics and economics, in other words, the extension of the Kingdom of God in its integrity, has varied with the centuries. Broadly speaking, the thirteenth century has been, so far, the high water mark of that influence. Since then, until recently, there has been steady decay. No particular temporal social order, of course, will ever realise all that the Church is capable of giving to the world. Each of them will be defective for several reasons.

First of all, the action of the Church, welcomed by some Catholics, will be opposed by the ignorance, incapacity and perversity of others.

Secondly, even if all Catholics did accept fully, they could only reflect some of the beauty of the Gospel as the saints reflected some of the infinitely imitable holiness of Christ.

Thirdly, there would still remain the vast number of non-Catholics to be won for Christ and have their social life organised under His rule. It is towards this latter goal that every generation of Catholics is called upon to work. The aim is not, needless to say, to bring back the Middle Ages, for the river of time does not turn back in its course, but the aim is to impregnate a new epoch with the divine principles of order so firmly grasped in the thirteenth century. The result of the so-called Reformation and the French Revolution has been to obscure the rights of God proclaimed by our Lord Jesus Christ and to diffuse naturalism.

Naturalism consists in the negation of the possibility of the elevation of our nature to the supernatural life and order, or more radically still, in the negation of the very existence of that life and order. In our day owing to the progress of the anti-Christian revolt, the more radical meaning has become common. Naturalism may be defined therefore as the attitude of mind which denies the reality of the divine life of grace and of our Fall therefrom by original sin. It rejects our consequent liability to revolt against the order of the divine life, when this life has been restored to us by our membership of Christ, and maintains that all social life should be organized on the basis of that denial. We must combat that mentality and proclaim the rights of God.

In his Encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Pope Leo XIII teaches authoritatively: “From what we have already set forth, it is indisputably evident that their [the Freemasons’] ultimate aim is to uproot completely the whole religious and political order of the world, which has been brought into existence by Christianity, and to replace it by another in harmony with their way of thinking. This will mean that the foundation and the laws of the new structure of society will be drawn from pure naturalism.” Now, it is historically certain that the Declaration of the Rights of Man had been conceived and elaborated in the Masonic lodges before it was presented to the States-General of France. Accordingly, the infamous Declaration, a naturalistic or anti-supernatural document, is in reality a declaration of war on membership of Christ and on the whole structure of society based on that supernatural dignity. The same naturalistic hostility to membership of Christ and the supernatural life of grace runs through all the documents concerning human rights drawn up under the influence of the organised forces that were responsible for the Declaration of 1789. That is the real struggle going on in the world, and in it every member of Christ is called upon to play his or her part. There can be no neutrality. “He that is not with me is against me ” (St. Matthew XII, 30.)

 

In other words, it is not possible to retard social evils by naturalistic means. Evils are the only thing that result from naturalism. Look at all of the evil that flowed forth from the administration of President George Walker Bush while sleepy-eyed "conservative," "pro-life" Catholics all across the ecclesiastical divide assured themselves that all was well, that they had vanquished the "greater evils" of 2000 and 2004 and were making "progress" on the "moral issues."

This abject dereliction of civic responsibility gave Bush a free hand from his "right flank," so to speak, as he governed as a brutal statist who authorized torture and terror as normal parts of American military policy in order to provide "security" to the "homeland." Does anyone care about the millions upon millions of preborn babies have been put to death by means of the chemical abortifacients funded by the "pro-life" administration of George Walker Bush and Richard N. Cheney. Does anyone care? Does anyone care about the fact that the defeated Republican naturalists, John Sidney McCain III and Sarah Heath Palin, supported these same evils. Does anyone care? To refuse to be informed about these facts and/or to be indifferent about them is be more than "neutral" in the struggle that Judeo-Masonic naturalism is waging against the Social Reign of Christ the King. It is to take naturalism's side in this struggle, which means to take the side of the devil himself.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, specifically and categorically rejected the diabolical falsehood of the "sovereignty of the people:"

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

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.

 

Yes, the madness of the universal franchise, as Pope Pius IX termed it in an allocution in 1874, arrogates unto the people what belongs to Christ the King. The "people" come to believe in a governmental system based on false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles that "they" get decide the inherent morality of human actions by means of their legislative bodies and/or by means of direct plebiscites (votes of the "people" on ballot propositions--initiatives and referenda--that become the civil law once approved in a general or special election). This is one of the major consequences of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the triumph, albeit temporary, of the reign of the devil by means of the "reign of man" wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry.

Time and time again we have heard from various libertarians, such as United States Representative Ron Paul, R-Texas, and careerists, such as United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, R-Arizona, and his former running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Heath Palin, that the matter of surgical abortion is one to be decided by state legislatures according to "the will of the people" in each of the fifty states. This is an egregious offense to the rights of God and to the immutability of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law that He has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for their infallible explication and eternal safekeeping. God has decreed these laws. They exist in the very nature of things. Their existence has been ratified and their application explained by Holy Mother Church.

No human being, whether acting individually or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance, has any authority to "permit" grave evils proscribed by the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. No legislative body has any "decision" to make about abortion other than to determine the specific penalties to be imposed upon women who have them and the physicians who perform them, a matter about which men of good will can disagree quite legitimately. There is no other "decision" to be made. None.

What applies to legislative bodies applies to plebiscites on abortion and other moral issues, such as the use of the word "marriage" to refer to those engaged in unrepentant acts of perversity opposed to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. The "people" have no right from God to determine anything about moral truths. Our job is to obey those truths by cooperating with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of all Graces, and to get ourselves into the Confessional when and if we violate any of those laws so that we can receive the healing balm of Absolution as the merits of that Most Precious Blood are applied to our immortal souls.

Ballot propositions, therefore, that are designed to retard certain evils in society are founded upon the fatal premise that the "people" do indeed have legitimate authority to "determine" which of laws God's eternal laws will be binding under cover of civil law. While these ballot propositions are certainly well-intentioned and are made by people of genuine good will in an effort to circumvent state legislatures and/or to overturn judicial edicts, the concession that such matters can be put to a vote of "the people" makes God's law subject to the whims of the prevailing majoritarian sentiments at any particular time. Nothing is stable. Everything is subject to being reversed at some later point as "sentiments" change. Live by the "will of the people" and you may very well die by "the will of the people."

Pope Pius IX recognized this in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864:

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?

 

Ballot propositions passed one year can be reversed quite literally the next. It's all up to "the will of the people" in our Protestant and Judeo-Masonic system. Mind you, I am not discussing in this instance whether one should or should not vote on such measures, which is a different issue than the one that I raised before the election on November 4, 2008, concerning the futility of voting in a presidential election where both major party candidates were supporters of grave evils (even some "conservatives" and "libertarians," men with whom I disagree on essential points because they do not understand the root causes of our problems, can see the sameness of the two major political parties; see: Rod Dreher and Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. ) Whether one should vote on such measures depends upon a number of subjective variables, not the least of which being the language contained in a particular ballot proposition. (See Good Intentions Do Not Redeem Moral Flaws and No Exceptions to Catholicism, Not One, Ever, both of which were written just weeks before I started to write publicly about sedevacantism.) Not all ballot propositions meant to retard evils contain language that a Catholic can support licitly.

What I am attempting to point out in this particular commentary is the fact that there are inherent dangers that exist in a system that does not recognize and accept the Catholic Church as the ultimate arbiter on all that pertains to the good of souls. Nothing is stable. Nothing is ever settled "permanently"--unless, that is, it is settled to the liking of those steeped in and/or profiting financially from the particular moral evil in question. The devil knows this, which is why he wants to keep us perpetually agitated by this or that issue to such an extent that any consideration of root and proximate causes of our difficulties is considered to be an inconvenience and/or a waste of time. Alas, there is no truly lasting means to guarantee the subordination of civil law to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law absent a docile and humble submission of men and their nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the true Church that He Himself created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

As should be evident from the results of the election three days ago, the demographics of the nation are changing. The older people who had a semblance of Catholicism or who were influenced minimally by the vestiges of Catholicism in their heretical sects are dying off. The indigenous Americans who should be here but whose existence was prevented by means of contraception and/or killed by abortion have been replaced by immigrants from all parts of the world, many of whom are abject pagans. Conciliarism itself has produced a veritable army of pagans from the ranks of its schools and colleges and universities. While people may breathe a sigh of "relief" in one year, you see, another year may bring a panic attack when public sentiment changes as a result of shifts in demographics and the entry into the voting rolls of more "graduates" of conciliar schools and of America's concentration camps (public schools).

To concede anything to false premises is to find oneself in a gigantic trap of the devil from which there is no natural means of escape. None whatsoever. Although I have tried, most unsuccessfully, it appears, to document the grave evils that have been promoted by the outgoing "conservative," "pro-life" administration (a documentation that was noted in 2005 by the Constitution Party candidate for President of the United States of America this year, Chuck Baldwin, Is The Religious Right Gullible, Naïve, or Willingly Ignorant?), let me illustrate this point once again to prove that the devil is mocking us as we fall for his naturalistic traps here in the United States of America.

To wit, a group of between 1,500 and 3,000 practitioners of unrepentant sins of perversion against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment gathered in front of a Mormon "temple" in the Westwood section of the City of Los Angeles, California, last evening, Thursday, November 6, 2008, to protest the passage of Proposition 8 by the voters three days ago. The proposition, which defines a marriage as between one man and one woman, passed by a margin of 52.5% of the vote to 47.5% of the vote, which is an 8.5% decline in support for the exact wording contained in Proposition 22 in the year 2000. "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California."

Proposition 8 sought to reverse a decision of the Supreme Court of the State of California earlier this year that reversed Proposition 22 as unconstitutional according to the Constitution of the State of California, thus requiring the civil authorities to issue "marriage" licenses to those steeped in those acts of perversion who applied for such recognition of their illicit relationships. Its passage has angered the practitioners of evil, causing them to vent their anger at the Mormon "church," which is of the devil itself and is a quintessentially Americanist heresy. The devil uses the Mormons to oppose such "marriages" by means of a ballot proposition and then inspires the defeated side to strike out at his minions in the Mormon cult, not at the Taj Mahony of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in California, some of whose priests actually donated money to defeat the proposition. Talk about head-spinning.

This is all a realization of what Pope Gregory XVI described in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, would be the world's lot if the civil "freedoms" of Modernity were permitted to expand unchecked:

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?

 

We are in the bottomless pit caused by "immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty."

One of the striking things about opposing the promotion of various moral evils by means of ballot propositions is that such efforts must be based in secular, naturalistic, interdenominational or non-denominational terms rather than in a frank and open acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of Christ the King over every aspect of our lives. This renders these efforts, which are undoubtedly well-intentioned, open to attack from those who believe in the naturalist lie of egalitarianism and thus reject even all notion of a hierarchy of truths that exist in the nature of things."Who are you to tell me that marriage is only between a man and a woman?" some of these naturalists will ask. Yes, even arguments based in the logic of the Natural Law must lose their force over the course of time in a pluralistic society as the ultimate authority given us by God Himself to teach us and to sanctify us is rejected in favor of the sovereignty of "the people" and in favor of generic, Judeo-Masonic references to God that were specifically condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937:

Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.

None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xl, 15).

Pope Leo XIII explained in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, that the reduction of public policy to the natural level alone results in public life being stained with crime. While we can and must take measures to protect the common temporal welfare and to punish malefactors, it is simply insufficient to take these measures absent a subordination to the Deposit of Faith as It has been entrusted by Our Lord Himself exclusively to the Catholic Church and absent any consideration of how public policy assists or hinders man in the pursuit of his Last End:

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.

 

"Stopgap" measures based on the "lowest common" naturalistic denominator will always collapse as they are built on the quicksand of naturalism. The Church Militant on earth can be battered. She will never suffer a final defeat. "Stopgap" measures based on the "lowest common" naturalistic denominator must, because they are based on naturalism, consist of internal contradictions and inconsistencies that render its objectives merely symbolic and rhetorical in nature.

To wit, the website dedicated to the promotion of Proposition 8 in California expressed its objectives in purely naturalistic, secular terms:

Vote YES on Proposition 8 to overturn the outrageous Supreme Court decision and restore the definition of marriage that was approved by over 61% of voters. Proposition 8 is NOT an attack on gay couples and does not take away the rights that same-sex couples already have under California’s domestic partner law. California law already grants domestic partners all the rights that a state can grant to a married couple. Gays have a right to their private lives, but not to change the definition of marriage for everyone else.

Passing Proposition 8 protects our children and places into the Constitution the simple definition that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Protect Marriage - Yes on 8 » Home Page

 

Notice the fundamental defect in the reasoning here. "Proposition 8 is NOT an attack on" those engaged in unrepentant acts of perversity "and does not take away the rights that" such practitioners of perversity "already have under California's domestic partner law." This concedes the licit nature of "civil unions" legislation and endorses the "right" of individuals to engage in perverse, gravely sinful acts while receiving special "domestic partnership" status from the civil state. (Supporters of a similar proposition in Florida, Amendment 2, which also passed four days ago, were also careful to state that "rights" may be granted to unmarried persons as long as they are not substantially the "same" as marriage. No, "civil unions" are illicit. Period.) No such "right" exists, as Pope Pius XI made abundantly clear in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930, when discussing efforts in his day to legitimize under cover of law morally illicit relationships between men and women:

How grievously all these err and how shamelessly they leave the ways of honesty is already evident from what we have set forth here regarding the origin and nature of wedlock, its purposes and the good inherent in it. The evil of this teaching is plainly seen from the consequences which its advocates deduce from it, namely, that the laws, institutions and customs by which wedlock is governed, since they take their origin solely from the will of man, are subject entirely to him, hence can and must be founded, changed and abrogated according to human caprice and the shifting circumstances of human affairs; that the generative power which is grounded in nature itself is more sacred and has wider range than matrimony -- hence it may be exercised both outside as well as within the confines of wedlock, and though the purpose of matrimony be set aside, as though to suggest that the license of a base fornicating woman should enjoy the same rights as the chaste motherhood of a lawfully wedded wife.

Armed with these principles, some men go so far as to concoct new species of unions, suited, as they say, to the present temper of men and the times, which various new forms of matrimony they presume to label "temporary," "experimental," and "companionate." These offer all the indulgence of matrimony and its rights without, however, the indissoluble bond, and without offspring, unless later the parties alter their cohabitation into a matrimony in the full sense of the law.

Indeed there are some who desire and insist that these practices be legitimatized by the law or, at least, excused by their general acceptance among the people. They do not seem even to suspect that these proposals partake of nothing of the modern "culture" in which they glory so much, but are simply hateful abominations which beyond all question reduce our truly cultured nations to the barbarous standards of savage peoples.

 

Thus it is that the proponents of Proposition 8 falsely conceded the "right" of those engaged in perversity to have their sinful relationships recognized by the civil state. Sinful behavior is never the basis of human self-identity. Each of us must be ashamed of our sins and truly sorry for them as we seek to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary after we have received Absolution in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. Sinful behavior is never the basis of self-identity and it is never the basis by which the civil law bestow special status upon those steeped unrepentantly in acts that caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death, acts that wound His Mystical Body, the Church Militant, on earth today, acts that have wounded the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The fact that Proposition 8 was passed by the voters and may be sustained by the Supreme Court of the State of California does not vitiate the falsehoods propounded by some of its chief supporters. "Civil unions" are evil in and of themselves. To make advertence to the existence of these "civil unions" in order to "prove" how the proposition was not a "threat" to those engaged in perverse behavior in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments is to mislead voters into believing that such "civil unions" are "legitimate" because they are an "accomplished fact" insofar as the civil law is concerned and must be accepted as such. This is gravely wrong.

Silvio Cardinal Antoniano explained over four hundred fifty years ago that things repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity can never be the foundation of temporal order:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity.

 

It is indeed impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquility by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. Attempting to base opposition to the "marriage" of individuals steeped in unnatural vice in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments on the existence of a legal "recognition" of that vice that is short of "marriage" but contains many of the same legal "benefits" as marriage is indeed repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity. Live by the "will of the people," my friends, and you will die by the "will of the people." We must live and die by the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church.

The "will of the people" in California was expressed also by a rejection of an abortion waiting period and parental notification initiative on the ballot. This initiative, called Proposition 4, lost by almost the same margin by which Proposition 8 passed, 52% against the initiative, 48% in favor of it. Although parental notification measures must include a judicial "bypass" provision (minor girls who claim that they are "frightened" to tell their parents of a pregnancy out-of-wedlock can petition to a judge to bypass the need to notify her parents of her decision to kill her child) that renders them little more than symbolic acts, it is once again a demonstration that a reliance upon the "will of the people" is a most unsure foundation upon which to base our actions.

While it is scandalous that forty-eight percent of Catholics, according to exit polling, voted against the proposition, is is quite telling that the conciliar bishops in the State of Colorado opposed Amendment 48, which sought to amend the state constitution to declare that a human being exists at the moment of fertilization, partly on the grounds that it had no "chance" of passing or stopping abortions, although they left it to each Catholic to decide how to vote on the amendment, which garnered twenty-seven percent of the vote on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.

Well, it could be argued quite successfully that voting for the "lesser of two evils" last Tuesday would do nothing to stop abortions and indeed would continue to indemnify politicians who call themselves "pro-life" who make exceptions to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment and who support the unrestricted killing of babies by means of chemical abortifacients. What a mess is created by the lie of the sovereignty of "the people." What a mess whereby Catholics all across the ecclesiastical divide are willing to compromise and/or to think in "strategic" terms rather than to defend the Faith by simply proclaiming the truths of the Catholic Faith, which was not spread in the first centuries of the Church by means of ballot propositions.

Yes, there can be occasions where propositions dealing with matters in the realm of Caesar might be worthy of casting a vote (opposing the local concentration camp--er, public school board--budget, opposing casinos or other dens of iniquity, opposing some other kind of boondoggle to be funded by the issuance of bonds by a government or a public corporation of some sort--transit authority, water district, sewer district, etc.). The Church teaches us that the civil authorities have their own sphere of autonomy and competency, including the very forms and structures by which men devise to be governed, in which men are free to act according to their best judgments concerning the common temporal good, simply reminding those in civil power to keep in mind always the greater honor and glory of God and the eternal good of souls.

Those matters that pertain to the realm of God and thus the good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood, however, are beyond the ability of human beings, whether acting by themselves or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance or by means of a plebiscite, to do anything other than to acknowledge and accept without one iota of dissent. And all of the well-intentioned efforts to try to retard various moral evils at the ballot box must, apart from whatever moral objections might be raised concerning their phraseology and terms (such as the South Dakota ballot measure that sought to ban some abortions while permitting others in the "hard" cases), be subject to the constant vicissitudes of the shifting sands of popular sovereignty, which is no foundation at all to pursue the common temporal good in light of the pursuit of man's Last End.

In a Catholic world, good readers, there would be no need for all manner of laws and ballot propositions to "inform" the citizenry as to what was considered permissible as they, the citizenry, would know what was permissible according to the Mind of the Divine Redeemer as He has discharged It exclusively in the Cahtolic Church. That such disjointed laws and ballot propositions are considered necessary to combat the very social evils that have grown precisely because of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry is proof yet again of the utter madness and insanity of a world where Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ does not reign as King over men and their nations as they recognize the authority He has entrusted to His Catholic Church.

Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men? The false premises of the Modern civil state have led to angry men singing various songs to secure the approve of a majority of their fellow men. Each of those songs are, however, simply a variation of the naturalist theme that it is not absolutely necessary for each human being and for each nation on this earth to profess the true Faith and to be governed thereby at every moment of human existence. These songs of the angry men of naturalism produce cacophony in a society, not the symphony that produced by the harmonizing of everyday life with the truths of the Holy Faith.

Catholicism is the one and only way out of this mess. Arguments and propositions based on naturalism will fail sooner or later as the demographics of the various states change and as the influence wrought by the evils taught in the public and conciliar schools continues to make itself manifest over the years.

We have seen something of a shift, perhaps not seismic at this point, in the "drift" of the future with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, who won with the support of sixty-nine percent of first-time voters, sixty-six percent of voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, and fifty-two percent of those between the ages of thirty and forty-four. This is your future, my friends, and it will be reflected in future plebiscites in various states as the years progress, barring, of course, Divine intervention by means of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Several generations of Americans have been raised on nothing other than naturalism, and there is no getting this naturalistic"toothpaste" back into the tube by naturalistic means.

The counterfeit church of conciliarism has played its own role in helping to worsen the situation caused by the false premises of Modernity. It has made its "reconciliation" with the principles of 1787 as millions upon millions of young Catholics detained in conciliar schools have had their souls spiritually aborted (see Cardinal Newman Society Survey and my own Apostasy Has Consequences.)

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

 

Pope Leo XIII warned solemnly in  Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, that there can be no "reconciliation" with the principles of the Revolution:

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

 

Future voters, my friends, including those produced by Catholic schools in conciliar captivity, will indeed be singing the songs of angry "modern men," and the "will of the people" tomorrow may well be something quite different than the "will of the people" now.

Alas, it is not the "will of the people" that matters. It is the law of God as He has revealed It to us through His Catholic Church, which is why all of our efforts, including those to try to conform the civil law to His eternal Law, must be must on right principles without any compromises and without any concessions to error whatsoever.

On this First Saturday, which is also the Octave Day of the Solemnity of All Saints, we entrust ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying our Rosaries this day in church as we spend an additional fifteen minutes meditating upon the mysteries contained within Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary (a sermon of whatever length may take the place of the fifteen minute period of meditation).

We must have confidence in Our Lady's Fatima Message, consecrating ourselves to her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life. The only election that really matters is the one that took place in the Baptismal font when we were elected to be citizens of Heaven. This is our destiny, please God and by the graces that flow forth from the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother we persevere to the points of our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace.

No matter the results of a particular election or the results of a particular plebiscite, we can be assured that our efforts to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King by means of our total consecration to Him through Mary our Immaculate Queen will help to plant a few seeds for the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith as we, recidivist sinners that we are, attempt to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world, remembering to say each day:

O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

 

These are the words spoken by the Mother of God in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety-one years ago. They should be on our lips at all times so that there will come a day when the words uttered by the Cristeros in Mexico and the brave Catholics during the Spanish Revolution will be on the lips of all men and heralded on the flags of all nations:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

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.

See also: A Litany of Saints