Fighting Moral Evil With Doctrinal Evil

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Although Timothy Dolan, the happy "bishop" who said last year that one could use whatever name you want to refer to God, recently accidentally uttered a bit of truth without meaning to do so (see Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Dolan Finally Speaks The Truth), he spoke no truth at all when he held a news conference prior to giving his presidential address to his brother heresiarchs at the semi-annual meeting of the Raccoon Lodge, excuse me, the United States Conference of Alleged Catholics Masquerading as Bishops (USCCB) in Washington, District of Columbia, on Monday, November 14, 2011, the Feast of Saint Josaphat. You can see for yourselves:

BALTIMORE — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops opened a new front in their fight against abortion and same-sex marriage on Monday, recasting their opposition as a struggle for “religious liberty” against a government and a culture that are infringing on the church’s rights.

The bishops have expressed increasing exasperation as more states have legalized same-sex marriage, and the Justice Department has refused to go to bat for the Defense of Marriage Act, legislation that established the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

“We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the bishops conference, said in a news conference Monday at the bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore. He added that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were trying “to push religion back into the sacristy.”

Archbishop Dolan also came prepared to answer questions about the sexual-abuse scandal at Penn State University, which has reminded so many observers of the Catholic Church’s own abuse scandal. He said that the accusations against a former university football coach were a reminder that sexual abuse is a universal problem that affects most institutions.

“Every time that once again takes over the headlines we once again bow our heads in shame,” the archbishop said. “We know what you’re going through, and you can count on our prayers.”

The bishops are struggling to reclaim the role they played in the 1980s and into the ’90s as a nationally recognized voice on the moral dimension of public policy issues like economic inequality, workers’ rights, immigration and nuclear weapons proliferation. Since then, however, they have reordered their priorities, with abortion and homosexuality eclipsing poverty and economic injustice.

But as the sexual-abuse scandal largely overshadowed their agenda in the last decade, their pronouncements on politics and morality have been met with indifference even by many of their own flock. The bishops issue guidelines for Catholic voters every election season, a document known as “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” which is distributed in many parishes. But the bishops were informed at their meeting on Monday that a recent study commissioned by Fordham University in New York found that only 16 percent of Catholics had heard of the document, and only 3 percent had read it.

Nevertheless, the bishops remain a forceful political lobby, powerful enough to nearly derail the president’s health care overhaul two years ago over their concerns about financing for abortion. Last week, the White House, cognizant of the bishops’ increasing ire, invited Archbishop Dolan to a private meeting with President Obama, their second. Archbishop Dolan said they talked about the religious liberty issue, among others.

“I found the president of the United States to be very open to the sensitivities of the Catholic community,” Archbishop Dolan said in the news conference. “I left there feeling a bit more at peace about this issue than when I entered.”

But in an impassioned address to the prelates, Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., the chairman of the bishops’ newly established committee on religious liberty, said the church would urge priests and laypeople to take up the religious liberty cause. Bishop Lori said that in states like Illinois and Massachusetts, and in the District of Columbia, Catholic agencies that received state financing had been forced to stop offering adoption and foster care services because those states required them to help same-sex couples to adopt, just as they helped heterosexual couples.

Bishop Lori said in his speech, “The services which the Catholic Church and other denominations provide are more crucial than ever, but it is becoming more and more difficult for us to deliver these services in a manner that respects the very faith that impels us to provide them.”

The bishops have also been lobbying the Department of Health and Human Services to expand the religious exemption to the mandate in Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul that requires private insurers to pay for contraception. The exemption, as currently written, would still require Catholic hospitals and universities to cover birth control for most of their employees — which the church says is a violation of its religious freedom.

Some liberal Catholic commentators have criticized the bishops’ priorities, saying they are playing into the culture wars. John Gehring, Catholic outreach coordinator with Faith in Public Life, a liberal religious advocacy group in Washington, said, “The bishops speak in hushed tones when it comes to poverty and economic justice issues, and use a big megaphone when it comes to abortion and religious liberty issues.” (Bishops Renew Fight on Abortion and Gay Marriage.)

 

This is not at all surprising. After all, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI began this year ten and one-half months ago making a defense of the doctrinal evil of "religious liberty" the theme of his annual "World Day of Peace" message (see Another Year of the Same Conciliar Apostasy, Part One, Another Year of the Same Conciliar Apostasy, Part Two and Another Year of the Same Conciliar Apostasy, Part Three). These conciliar madmen believe that a concept condemned by one true pope after another as a heresy or insanity or madness can be used to fight moral evils that have been made more possible by the Protestant Revolution's overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the rise of the madness of the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry. Barack Hussein Obama is finally going to awaken and "respect" "divergent opinions" on controversial issues? Timothy Dolan really believes that this is possible. He believes that Barack Hussein Obama, steeped in one naturalist lie after another, is going to let the conciliar "bishops" fight his plans to promote moral evils under cover of the civil law and with our taxpayer dollars under the banner of "religious freedom"? Madness. Just utter madness.

Never mind exhorting Catholics in the conciliar structures to lift high the banner of Christ the King. No, that's part of the past. They have to be instructed more and more in the ways of "religious liberty" in the belief that all religions can play a role in the "building of the better world." In other words, they have to be instructed that it is possible to fight moral evil with a condemned doctrinal evil.

Our true popes have told us where the lies of Protestantism and naturalism lead us, to the very abyss. Why do we not listen to them?

 

"Man should use his reason first of all to recognize his Sovereign Maker, honoring Him and admiring Him, and submitting his entire person to Him. For, from his childhood, he should be submissive to those who are superior to him in age; he should be governed and instructed by their lessons, order his life according to their laws of reason, society and religion. This inflated equality and liberty, therefore, are for him, from the moment he is born, no more than imaginary dreams and senseless words." (Pope Pius VI, Brief Quod aliquantum, March 10, 1791; Religious Liberty, a “Monstrous Right").

The Catholic Church: For how can We tolerate with equanimity that the Catholic religion, which France received in the first ages of the Church, which was confirmed in that very kingdom by the blood of so many most valiant martyrs, which by far the greatest part of the French race professes, and indeed bravely and constantly defended even among the most grave adversities and persecutions and dangers of recent years, and which, finally, that very dynasty to which the designated king belongs both professes and has defended with much zeal - that this Catholic, this most holy religion, We say, should not only not be declared to be the only one in the whole of France supported by the bulwark of the laws and by the authority of the Government, but should even, in the very restoration of the monarchy, be entirely passed over? But a much more grave, and indeed very bitter, sorrow increased in Our heart - a sorrow by which We confess that We were crushed, overwhelmed and torn in two - from the twenty-second article of the constitution in which We saw, not only that "liberty of religion and of conscience" (to use the same words found in the article) were permitted by the force of the constitution, but also that assistance and patronage were promised both to this liberty and also to the ministers of these different forms of "religion". There is certainly no need of many words, in addressing you, to make you fully recognize by how lethal a wound the Catholic religion in France is struck by this article. For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me." (Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, POST TAM DIUTURNAS)

"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.)

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." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

 

When are we going to "get it"? Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. All attempts to put Humpty Dumpty back together again are going to fail:

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

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. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Why be drawn into the hysteria of the moment? It is only that, hysteria, and that comes from one source alone, the adversary.

The American Revolution and the French Revolution and the Mexican Revolution and the Italian Risorgimento and the Kulturkampf of Otto von Bismarck and the Bolshevik Revolution and the Cuban Revolution and the Chinese Revolution and the Sandinista Revolution have all had one thing in common: a thorough rejection of Christ the King and His true Church as paramount in the lives of men and their societies. The differences are only in degrees and methods. The American Revolution has coopted Catholics subtly over course of time while the others used violence and/or state coercion to silence Catholics. No matter the differences in degrees and methods, the results are the same: a world where men believe that they can order themselves, both individually and socially, without even praying that Our Lord Himself reign over them and their nations as He has revealed Himself to them through His Catholic Church.

We must be calm in the midst of this hysteria. Perfectly calm. There is no fighting moral evil with doctrinal evil. The best that we can do is to make reparation for our own many sins, especially our sins of worshiping at the altars of the men who had a founding hatred for Christ the King that enshrined the very evil, "religious liberty," that made its way down through time to the "Second" Vatican Council's Dignitatis Humanae, December 7, 1965, in full contradiction of the consistent and immutable teaching of the Catholic Church.

Our Lady's Fatima Message is the way out of the mess caused by the marriage of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is why the devil has worked mightily against the Faith by using the conciliar revolutionaries to deconstruct and thus misrepresent it. We must be as faithful as we can to that Fatima Message, praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, embracing the Cross of the Divine Redeemer as we do so, heedless of Its shame before men and their nations. 

Consecrated to Jesus through Mary, we remember these words that Our Lord Himself spoke 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.)

 

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of the Church and Protector of the Faithful, 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 Gregory Thaumaturgus, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints