Friends of Caligula

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves. But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles: But when they shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.

The brother also shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and shall put them to death. And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake: but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved. And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall not finish all the cities of Israel, till the Son of man come. The disciple is not above the master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the goodman of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household?

Therefore fear them not. For nothing is covered that shall not be revealed: nor hid, that shall not be known. That which I tell you in the dark, speak ye in the light: and that which you hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops. And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows. Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me. (Matthew 10: 16-40.)

 

Over thirteen million Catholics were killed by the brute force of Roman emperors between the time of Emperor Nero in 67 A.D. and the time of the Edict of Milan, issued by Emperor Constantine, in the year 313 A.D. Civil law was used as the basis of preventing the public worship of the true God and of attempting to force Catholics to pay homage to all manner of false gods and/or to engage in forbidden practices. The executions of these thirteen million Catholics was carried out, at least in most instances, after what passed for due process of law in the Roman empire. Even Roman citizens who had performed their military duty bravely in the service of the Roman Empire, such as Saint Eustacius, were put to death because they refused to participate in the worship of the false gods.

Although the systematic persecution of Catholics did not begin until twenty-six years after his death in the year 41 A.D., the depraved Emperor Caligula certainly paved the way for that persecution, undertaken by his nephew, Nero, the decadent statist named Caligula, the immediate successor of Emperor Tiberius upon the latter's death in 37 A.D., was certainly a forerunner of many of the civil leaders who have walked the face this earth in the past five hundred years, including the current crop of petty caesars who are seeking to menace what they believe to be is the Catholic Church in the United States of America.

Consider this brief description of the Caligula's modus operandi:

 

Caius Caesar, surnamed Caligula, the youngest son of Germanicus, and a favorite with the legions for his father's sake, was proclaimed by Marco, commander of the pretorians, as the successor of Tiberius, and was acknowledged by the senate and the people with unfeigned satisfaction. His first acts gained him universal applause. He restored many privileges to the people, delivered innocent persons from prison and banishment, abolished arbitrary prosecutions for citizens of state and evinced so good intentions, that he received from the senate the most flattering honors.

But the joy of the Romans was not of long duration. Caligula, on recovering from a dangerous disease, which may have impaired his mind, at once began to indulge in every species of folly, cruelty, and licentiousness. In two months, he spent on shows and public entertainments more than sixty millions of dollars. When the large treasure left by Tiberius was exhausted, the plunder and the murder of the wealthiest the plunder and the murder of the wealthiest citizens were the means to which Caligula resorted in order procure fresh heaps of gold. Among many others, he put to death his young cousin Tiberius, his father-in-law Silanus, and his benefactor Marco, to whose influence he chiefly owed his peaceful accession to the imperial throne. On one occasion, when provoked by the indifference of the multitude to some of his shows, he uttered the exclamation, "Would that the people of Rome had but one neck!" On another, happening to want money when at play he sent for the public register which contained the names of property-holders, condemned a certain number of them to death, and said to those with whom he was playing: "How unlucky you are! It has taken you a long time to win  a small sum, and in one moment I have won six hundred millions of sesterces ($15,000,000)." (Reverend A. J. B. Vuibert, S.S.. A.M., Ancient History from the Creation of Man to the Fall of the Western Empire in A.D. 476. Baltimore and New York: John Murphy Company, 1901, pp. 550-551. This, by the way, an excellent history book. It is one of the best that I have seen on the topic of ancient history, especially as it is

Noting a few differences here and there, this description certainly fits the plunder of the national treasuries of supposedly "civilized" Western nations by the ruling political elites, people who have a symbiotic relationship with the titans of commerce, banking, industry, entertainment, medicine and law. The ruling elites believe that the liberty and the wealth of the unwashed masses belong to them by means of personal right. Law and public policy must be used as the means to acquire, retain and expand the hold that the ruling elite has on those masses, appealing to the lowest possible denominator to generate just enough "public support" as to face little threat to their hegemony over almost every single facet of ordinary life.

Our current caesar, Barackus Obamus Ignoramus, still enjoys the support of many Americans, a phenomenon that was discussed two days ago in Truth Resistant Strains of Naturalist Bacteria, even though he is completing the job of bankrupting the United States of America, whose true Debt Clock" Began Ticking On July 4, 1776, that has accelerated in recent decades, especially under the administration of his predecessor, Caesar Georgii Bushus Ignoramus.

Barry Soetero, who has admitted using cocaine and was trained in the ways of Marxism as an adolescent in Hawaii by his Communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, has sought to plunder the wealth of ordinary citizens and to deprive them of their legitimate liberties in order to make them the slaves and tools of his social-engineering apparatchiks and their grand visions for a controlled citizenry in the name of "social justice" (Marxism-Leninism).

A demagogue of monstrous proportions, albeit one who is not quite as varied in his approach as William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, who did not need a TelePrompTer to use as a weapon of mass disinformation, and not as sophisticated in his efforts to vilify his opponents as Mario Pilate, Pontius Cuomo, Barack Hussein Obama portrays all opposition to him as illegitimate and rooted in some kind of "hatred" for the poor and downtrodden or women and those who are steeped in perverse acts against nature that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

The forty-fourth president of the United States of America, who listened with such rapt attention and approval for over twenty years to the fanatical racialism of the not-so-reverend Jeremiah Wright and who received great succor from a conciliar presbyter, Michael Phleger, who has had pro-aborts and racial provocateurs as Wright and Al Sharpton speak from the pulpit at Saint Sabina Church in Chicago, Illinois, has, of course, quite notoriously engaged in a campaign of late against what he thinks is the Catholic Church by approving a mandate, crafted by his pro-abortion Catholic Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, applicable to all employers, including religious institutions, to provide health-care insurance coverage for contraceptives and other "family planning services" to their employees.

Although most of the conciliar "bishops" have determined to oppose this hideous mandate by means of statements and, most recently, a lawsuit initiated by forty-three different organizations (including the Archdioceses of New York and Washington and the Diocese of Rockville Centre), by calling to "protect" the very error that made the likes of Obama and his tyrannical edicts possible, "religious liberty," some of their number are beginning to get just a wee bit edgy, it appears, that the effort to oppose the Obama-Sebelius "family planning" mandate might be used by "conservatives" as a wedge in this year's election to use against Obama and others of the "left" who are, you understand, just so very, very, very concerned about "economic" and "social" "justice," which are nothing other than Marxist buzzwords for statism and the state-sponsored confiscation of private property.

One of these men in the conciliar hierarchy in the United States of America is getting a little edgy about the "religious liberty" campaign of his brother "bishops": is the conciliar "bishop" of Stockton, California, a man by the name of Stephen Blaire, who is, surprise, surprise, surprise, Sergeant Carter, a protege of the six hundred million dollar man himself, Roger "Cardinal" Mahony:

The Archdiocese of Washington today joined a rush of Catholic lawsuits around the country this week challenging the Department of Health and Human Services mandate on the inclusion of contraception in health care plans beginning August 2013. In California, however, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of the Diocese of Stockton expressed some guarded concerns about the opening of this latest front in the U.S. bishops’ continuing religious liberty campaign. Bishop Blaire is chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and a member of the U.S.C.C.B. Administrative Committee which approved the "Fortnight of Freedom" campaign.

“The bishops that I am in contact with in California are strong supporters of the importance of defending and strengthening religious liberty in our country,” Bishop Blaire said. “I do think there are probably some different concerns with how it is being done,” he added.

According to Bishop Blaire, attorneys for California dioceses “did have some concerns with this strategy,” expressed a desire for more consultation and worried about possible legislative and judicial repercussions because of it in California. He explained that California diocese had already gone unsuccessfully down the judicial path in challenging government mandates on contraception and insurance coverage.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is not a party to the lawsuits. Several were filed initially by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and the most recent suits have been brought on behalf of 44, so far, Catholic dioceses, universities and other entities in 12 different federal jurisdictions in coordination with pro bono attorneys from the law firm of Jones Day.

Bishops Blaire acknowledged that “there is a concern among some bishops that there ought to have been more of a wider consultation” regarding overall strategy on the religious liberty question. “And I say that with some hesitation,” he added, “because the California bishops very strongly support whatever action has to be taken to promote religious liberty.

“The question is what is our focus as bishops and that we have opportunity to clarify our focus and that we are all in agreement on focus.” He said some bishops appear to be speaking exclusively on the mandate itself “that it is imposed … as a violation of [individual] conscience."

He said there are other bishops who see the crucial question as the religious liberty of the church itself and its freedom “to exercise her mission through her institutions.” He added, “I think that it’s important that there be a broader discussion of these issues [at the June U.S. bishops meeting in Atlanta]” so that U.S. bishops can clarify their message “and not allow it to be co-opted.”

Bishop Blaire explained he was worried that some national groups appear to be seizing on the issue and transforming the dispute over religious liberty into a political fight.

“I am concerned that in addressing the H.H.S. mandate,” he said, “that it be clear that what we are dealing with is a matter of religious liberty and the intrusion of government into the church and that it not be perceived as a woman’s issue or a contraceptive issue.

“I think there are different groups that are trying to co-opt this and make it into political issue, and that’s why we need to have a deeper discussion as bishops.”

Bishop Blaire believes discussions with the Obama administration toward a resolution of the dispute could be fruitful even as alternative remedies are explored. He worried that some groups “very far to the right” are trying to use the conflict as “an anti-Obama campaign.”

“I think our rhetoric has to be that of bishops of the church who are seeking to be faithful to the Gospel, that our one concern is that we make sure the church is free to carry out her mission as given to her by Christ, and that remains our focus.” If the bishops can maintain that focus, he said, “the people rally behind us,” but the bishops lose their support when the conflict is seen as too political.

Bishop Blaire said the upcoming meeting in Atlanta should offer an opportunity for a “thorough and careful discussion” about focus in the religious liberty campaign and Catholic “principles of cooperation that need to be applied in any kind of accommodation.” ("Bishop"  Blaire seeks wider consultation on "religious liberty").

 

Cooperation? Accommodation? Are you serious, "Bishop" Blaire?

Of course he is serious. He's a disciple of Roger Mahony, who was and remains even in retirement a disciple of the late Joseph "Cardinal" Bernardin's "consistent ethic of life," which contended that to be "pro-life" one must oppose the death penalty as well as abortion and support government policies that are said to assist the poor and weak and those belonging to groups whose members have been subjected in the past to various injustices, whether real or imagined.

Here is just a brief excerpt from the drivel that Bernardin served up at Fordham University, the first Catholic university in this country to go "secular" by divesting itself of its official connection with the Catholic Church in order to be governed by an independent board of trustees, on December 6, 1983, in his address that was designed to make the likes of Mario Matthew Cuomo, then serving as the Catholic pro-abortion Governor of the State of New York, more acceptable in the minds of "pro-life" Catholic voters in the event that Cuomo sought the Democrat Party presidential nomination in 1984:

The substance of a Catholic position on a consistent ethic of life is rooted in a religious vision. But the citizenry of the United States is radically pluralistic in moral and religious conviction. So we face the challenge of stating our case, which is shaped in terms of our faith and our religious convictions, in non-religious terms which others of different faith convictions might find morally persuasive. . . . As we seek to shape and share the vision of a consistent ethic of life, I suggest a style governed by the following rule: We should maintain and clearly communicate our religious convictions but also maintain our civil courtesy. We should be vigorous in stating a case and attentive in hearing another's case; we should test everyone's logic but not question his or her motives. ("A Consistent Ethic of Life: An American-Catholic Dialogue".).

 

To what must a Catholic listen on the issue of the taking of innocent human life? Those who support the chemical and/or surgical taking of innocent human life in the womb do not have a "case." They have lies. Such people, if they are non-Catholics, must be converted to the Catholic Faith. Those who are Catholics must be told that they excommunicate themselves from the Church's maternal bosom by supporting willful murder, one the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

The Bernardin approach to "life issues" contrasts, of course, very sharply with that of the true popes of the Catholic Church, who taught clearly and unequivocally that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. We do not speak in "non-religious" terms. We make proper Catholic distinctions when speaking about moral issues, remembering always to speak as Catholics at all times without ever dissenting from anything contained within the Deposit of Faith at any time for any reason, something that Pope Leo XIII made clear Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

The very reason that contraception and abortion are part of our culture and protected by civil law is because the Protestant Revolution overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King in the Sixteenth Century in many parts of Europe and the revolutions and movements inspired by the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry finished the job in the rest while creating entirely new nations elsewhere, such as in the United States of America, whose people were to celebrate religious "diversity" as a "protection" against tyranny and a "guarantee"of individual liberties rather than as the means by which the devil can propagate and then institutionalize Every Error Imaginable.

Here is a news flash for you, "Bishop" Stephen Edward Blaire: every Catholic must be opposed to the policies of President Barack Hussein Obama as he is an enemy of Christ the King and thus of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to to redeem. God will not be mocked "Bishop" Blaire. God will not stand the likes of Barack Hussein Obama or those who enable, apologize or make excuses for him at the moment they are face-to-face with Him at their Particular Judgment?

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

This applies to Barack Hussein Obama and Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi and the governor of your own State of California, Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., "Bishop" Blaire. It is the solemn duty of every Catholic to oppose the likes of these people and anyone else in public life, Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or Socialist or any other political affiliation, who support the killing, whether by chemical or surgical means, of a single, solitary child in his mother's womb as anyone and everyone who does so is disqualified from holding any position of public trust, whether elected or appointed. Period. What is so difficult or complex? What?

It is impossible for men or for their nations to pursue the common temporal good while at the same time promoting under cover of the civil law and celebrating in the midst of popular culture evils that repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity:

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. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

 

What's so difficult to understand about this, "Bishop" Blaire. What?

Alas, "Bishop" Blaire shares much in common with the conciliar "bishops" in the United States of America who are more "conservative." Both groups of "bishops" view the American political landscape in terms of the false opposites of the naturalist "left" and "right." Men such as Stephen Edward Blaire believe that to oppose Barack Hussein Obama is to support the likes of, say, Willard Mitt Romney, for whom I carry no brief whatsoever (see, for example, Truth Resistant Strains of Naturalist Bacteria). Both main factions within the body of the so-called United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are caught in what can be called the trap of dialectical Americanism.

The American "bishops," steeped in the ethos of Americanism that became an important building block of concilairism, cannot fathom a world in which the civil state is informed by the Sacred Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication and one whose civil leaders submit with docility to the authority of Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls. They are thus prone to get trapped in the false competition between the two main organized crime families of naturalism.

To wit, most Catholics in the United States of America in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century saw partisan politics as the means of upward social, political and economic mobility. Leaders of the Democratic Party saw in these immigrants and their children the means to win elections, thus welcoming them with open arms and making it relatively easy for them to advance the ranks of ward politics. There was a price to be paid for this, of course: one could not be confessionally Catholic in his public discourse. One had to speak in generic, inter-denominational or non-denominational terms, thus advancing the agenda of Judeo-Masonry as the Incarnation and Redemptive Act of the God-Man, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, was held to be of no account whatsoever in public life.

The "identification" of Catholics with the Democratic Party was such that a story was told in the 1930s of a woman in Boston, Massachusetts, who was praying a Novena to Saint Monica for the return of her son to the Faith. A friend asked her what had happened to her son. The woman praying the Novena said in great distress, "He's become a Republican!" Yes, being a Democrat and being a Catholic were considered to be inseparable by the lion's share of Catholics in the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries.

This alliance of Catholics with the Democratic Party was such that they overlooked the blatant anti-Catholicism of the likes of Thomas Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt time and time again. After all, it was the "party" that mattered. Oh, it was too bad that Wilson supported the slaughter of Catholics in Mexico. Catholics just voted for the Democratic Party, which permitted Franklin Roosevelt, who, unlike his statist predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, in whose administration he worked as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, cultivated friendships with Catholic prelates in order to coopt them into supporting his own statist plans, to unleash a veritable campaign team of Catholic bishops and priests to denounce any "conservative" Catholic who dared to criticize his policies. As noted in We're Not in Kansas Any More two months ago now, Roosevelt unleashed the "Right Reverend New Dealer," Monsignor John A. Ryan, to denounce the courageous Father Charles Coughlin for him during his re-election campaign in 1936. And Francis Cardinal Spellman was known as "FDR's errand boy in a miter."

It was, however, after World War II that fissures began to break in the solid Catholic support for the Democratic Party. The threat posed by the spread of the Soviet Union into Eastern Europe and the fall of China to the forces of Mao Zedong in 1949 led some Catholics to turn more and more to the Republican Party, convincing themselves that they could purge that stronghold of anti-Catholic Masons and nativists and transform it into a bastion of "conservatism" to turn back the New Deal and to win the Cold War.

The fissures in Catholic support became more pronounced in the years after the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, especially during the years of the administration of President Ronald Wilson Reagan. Having convinced themselves that electoral politics was the means to "transform" the country, well-meaning Catholics of the "conservative" bent engaged in what could be termed a Manichean struggle with Catholics of the "leftist" bent, each side armed with "bishops" who supported their own particular brand of Americanism, each convinced that the "other" side was composed of "bad guys" as they represented the '"true" interpretation of the Constitution and the "rights" of Catholics in a pluralistic society.

Just as Democrats and Republicans agree on the basic naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of the American founding, disagreeing on the specifics as to the conduct of public policy in light of those principles, so is it the case that "liberal" and "conservative" Catholics accept those same false principles as they diverge on the specifics of public policy according to the political "camp" which they believe represents the best means of achieving various goals. Both "liberal" and "conservatives" Catholics are as one in rejecting these simple truths of the Catholic Faith as binding upon their consciences and that they apply to the concrete circumstances to be found in the United States of America, believing that their naturalistic or non-denominational ideas and plans and strategies can "win the day" for their respective causes:

. . 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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

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.)

 

The irony here is that men such as Stephen Edward Blaire and his brother "bishops" in the conciliar church, including the one dressed in white in the Apostolic Palace, are also enemies of Christ the King and for souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem as are the likes of Barack Hussein Obama and the statist, relativist tyrants who serve with him in his administration, where the meting out of justice is a matter of color and of protecting one's "own" (see Memo to Eric Holder: There Is No Affirmative Action Program In Heaven and its companion article, To Advocate Christ The King, Nothing Else) to seek to "rectify" all past grievances and injustices in the name of a "new world order." Anyone who rejects as a matter of principle the immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King is indeed His enemy and thus of the souls He redeemed at so great a price.

The Vigil of Pentecost falls today, May 26, 2012. The date of May 26 is usually that on which the Feast of Saint Philip Neri is the principal liturgical celebration of the day as the Feast of Pope Saint Eleutherius is commemorated.

It is thus fitting to remember that Saint Philip Neri, the founder of the Oratory, was a saint of great joy in the midst of many terrible struggles and persecutions, including being treated horrifically by a pair of sacristans, both of whom had little regard for him and his genuine love of the poor, especially poor children. In the midst of each of his sufferings, however, Saint Philip Neri, the son of a very successful Florentine attorney and the nephew of a rich uncle in Naples, never sank into any kind of depression or self-pity. He never suffered from any kind of "burn out," a phrase used by many in today's world of morbid self-indulgence and psycho-babble to excuse themselves from carrying a cross that has been perfectly fitted for them from the hand of God for all eternity to carry as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Saint Philip Neri was once attempting to demonstrate to adolescent boys how to swing a tennis racquet properly (yes, an early form of tennis developed during the Italian Renaissance with balls made of leather and stuffed with hair). Swinging his arm back to demonstrate the proper motion, Father Philip Neri, whose sarcophagus is encased under a side altar of his own church, the Chiesa Nuovo, on the Via Nazionale in Rome not far from the Tiber River (I have been there many times to pray at his altar), knock over a glass pitcher filled to the brim with water. Smiling at himself, Father Philip said to the boys, "You see that? Father Philip gets results!" They all burst out in laughter.

We must be very joyful in the midst of the sufferings of the moment. We must be ready and willing to make fun of ourselves and our feeble efforts and be humbled by our mistakes and errors of one kind or another, seeking to learn from them. Catholics are neither pessimists or optimists. We are simply followers of the Divine Redeemer who are trying, despite our sins and failings, to know, love and serve God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church and as we cling to Our Blessed Mother to lift up our spirits each day so that we, vivified by the gifts and fruits of God the Holy Ghost, can carry our crosses with great joy and thus be a better witness in behalf of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen to help plant a few seeds for the restoration of Christendom as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We must exemplify the virtue of prophetic apostolic courage as we make no concessions to the conciliarism that has made its "reconciliation" with the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity, no concessions at all to the nonexistent "legitimacy" of men who use all manner of Hegelian devices to attempt to explain away their obligation to defend the Sacred Rights of Christ the King and to pray and to work for the restoration of the confessional Catholic civil state. This will not make us friends of the Caligulas in civil government or the Caligulas who have done such violence and worship in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. It might just, however, please God and by Our Lady's maternal intercession, help us to see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith as we fortify ourselves every day with the worthy reception of Our Lord in Holy Communion for the persecutions that will be upon us soon enough.

Our Lady has told us that we are in the crossing of her arms and in the folds of her mantle. Shouldn't this be enough to us as we run to her every day, protected by her Brown Scapular and showing our heart's oblation to her by praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit? We have Our Lady. She will shower us with the graces won for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross. She has told us that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end.

Why then, are we afraid? Why do we not simply approach her with confidence and ask her to help us to be ready in the midst of persecution to proclaim with love and with courage the very words that were proclaimed by Father Miguel Augustin Pro, S.J., when we was put to death by the Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico on November 23, 1927:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, 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 Philip Neri, pray for us.

Pope Saint Eleutherius, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints