From John Carroll To James Gibbons To Timothy Dolan

by Thomas A. Droleskey

If any man can be regarded as the Father of the American Church, it is John Carroll of Maryland. Bearer of a respected American name, ordained in a Society which had planted the faith on the shores of the Chesapeake, he took charge of the infant Church as naturally and firmly as a man bringing order to his own household. To the handful of ex-Jesuits demoralized by the suppression of their order he brought inspiration and direction, while guiding the Church from the Penal Age and into the sunlight of religious freedom. John Carroll organized the American Church. Under him, its diverse and disparate elements were unified, and by his establishment of a seminary and schools, its future was assured.

Although his administrative ability was indeed great, coming at a time when it was most needed, his insights into the American character may have been even of more value to the Church. He realized that in the matter of religion the genius of the new American political system was the separation of church and state. His writings and his speeches are full of encomiums not on behalf of toleration, for that presumes an established church, but for complete religious freedom. It may be that, like the Calverts before him, this attitude was born of expediency; that Catholicism had more to gain from religious freedom than any other American creed. True enough, but so also did the Founding Fathers of the United States have the most to gain from independence.

So it was John Carroll who gave the American Church, this congeries of European races forever in conflict over tastes and customs, yet joined together in the unity of the One Faith, its peculiar American stamp. Most astonishing, he foresaw its future, "To dissipate justice," he said in 1785, "time will be our best aid, as also will divine Providence and the experience of our fellow citizens in our devotion to our country and its independence." (Robert Leckie, American and Catholic, Doubleday and Company, pp. 88-89.)

 

There is a lot of truth contained in the three paragraphs cited above from the late Robert Leckie's American and Catholic, but not that intended by Mr. Leckie or by the man he praised so much, Archbishop John Carroll, who became the first bishop of the United States of America when he was consecrated on August 15, 1790, by Bishop Charles Walmseley, O.S.B., in Lulworth Castle, Dorsetshire, England. There is, I should say (apologies to Ralph McPherson Kiner for using this phrase that he repeated so much in the early days of broadcasting games for the New York Mets in the 1960s), a lot of unintended truth in the three paragraphs cited above.

Archbishop John Carroll did assure the future of the Catholic Church in the United States of America by his embrace of "religious freedom." Carroll's embrace of "religious freedom" in the belief that the civil rights of individual Catholics and the institutional rights of Holy Mother Church was erroneous as "religious freedom" for one is "religious freedom" for all. Lacking an ultimate arbiter ordained by God to resolve disputes between Church and State that were bound to emerge over the course of time as such disputes occurred frequently even during the period of Christendom itself.

Carroll, presaging the giddy optimism of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII concerning the need for an "opening to the world" (Roncalli/John XXIII's much vaunted "updating" or, in Italian, aggiornamento), could not foresee areas of conflict between Church and State in the framework of the "genius" of Constitution of the United States of America. Archbishop Carroll truly believed that the Catholic Church, though she might have suffer persecution from individual Protestants and unbelievers and in states where the roots of "religious liberty" had not yet taken root, would be respected by officials of the Federal government to carry out her apostolic duties without interference.

Quite instead, of course, religious liberty and separation of Church and State, both of which Carroll thought were guarantees of the life of the Church in the United States of America, opened the doors wide to the persecution that the current administration of Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus is waging against what he thinks are the true officials and institutions and agencies of the Catholic Church. Carroll's naive trust and full-throated endorsement of these twin errors came despite the fact that it was within his own lifetime that the first two of the papal condemnations of them were pronounced. Those pronouncements did not matter to him. The United States of America was "different." It was "special." It was "exceptional." The "good" and "tolerant" Protestants and Freemasons and others who just wanted to "live together" as Americans would never seek to the double-edged sword of "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State" against the Catholic Church, right?

Wrong:

 

"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.)

Archbishop John Carroll believed that, far from being a threat to the life of the Catholic Church and the rights of her children, "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State" were novel legal protections that should serve as the model for all nations in the "civilized" world. This is also, of course, the oft-stated belief of the fatigued and fatiguing apostate in Rome, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

 

In the 19th century under Pius IX, the clash between the Church's faith and a radical liberalism and the natural sciences, which also claimed to embrace with their knowledge the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make the "hypothesis of God" superfluous, had elicited from the Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age. Thus, it seemed that there was no longer any milieu open to a positive and fruitful understanding, and the rejection by those who felt they were the representatives of the modern era was also drastic.

In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

John Carroll also believed that the American Revolution provided  for the "modern" civil state that was indeed different from that of the French Revolution even though the truth of the matter is that both "models" were premised upon the rejection of the belief that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. The consequences of the American Revolution ate away at the integrity of the Catholic Faith over the course of time, producing an insidious, heresy, Americanism, that became the foundation of the false conciliar church's world view. The French Revolution was a direct and violent assault upon the Faith as the Cross of the Divine Redeemer had been implanted deeply into the soil of France for nearly sixteen hundred years. The devil had to attack the Faith in France directly, whereas it was not necessary to do so in the United States of America as he knew that Catholics would be lured into a false sense of "security" and "acceptance" over the course of time that would lead them to view the Church through the eyes of "democracy" and "rights" and "liberty" and "equality" rather than through the supernatural eyes provided by the Holy Faith.

Alas, it was only a matter of time before the Jacobins and Bolsheviks gained elected office in a land such complete "liberty" that error is considered to have more "rights" than the immutable truths of the true Faith. It was only a matter of time before civil rulers would say, "Our desire to protect the 'rights' of a 'persecuted minority' trumps religious freedom." It was only a matter of time before the men who all but a handful of warring Catholics, many of whom project their so-called "traditional movement" to be something big and consequential when it is so microscopically small and inconsequential that almost no one but no one outside of the rubber room of traditionalism knows anything about the "movement," believe are the Catholic bishops of the United States of America would be faced with one rear-guard effort after another to defend what little of Faith and Morals remain in the conciliar church.

These points have been made repeatedly on this site. However, they are important to stress repeatedly as we are immersed in a world of such pervasive naturalism that even well-meaning Catholics who are concerned about the temporal good of the country and the legitimate rights of Holy Mother Church get so caught up in the emotions of the prevailing moment that they are prone, at least now and again, to believe that statements made by the lords of conciliarism to oppose the schemes of the administration of Barack Hussein Obama to mandate that employers, including religious institutions, provide health-insurance coverage for contraception and "family planning" services.

As noted two days ago in Just About To Complete A Long March Into Oblivion, official websites of the Society of Saint Pius X have praised Timothy "Cardinal" Dolan for his own statements made opposition to the health-insurance mandate even though the basis of Dolan's opposition is the very heresy of religious liberty that was denounced firmly by the Society's founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. This is a disservice to all truth. It is a shameful concession to the very modern error that made possible the rise of the likes of Barack Hussein Obama in the first place just to make it appear that the Society is on the side of the 'bishops" against the administration even though the "bishops" support ObamaCare, which is a violation of the Natural Law principle of Subsidiarity, as a matter of principle. Dolan and his brother conciliar "bishops" also support religious liberty in principle and not merely as a necessary concession to the actual realities of law here in the pluralistic United States of America.

Archbishop John Carroll did not intend for all of this to unfold as it has. Unfortunately for John Carroll, however, good intentions and the most sincerely held of beliefs do not redeem false premises. The belief that men of divergent beliefs can "agree to disagree" on First and Last Things while they attempt to pursue the common temporal good is false. The belief that men are made "strong" and "free" by the proliferation of error under aegis of "freedom of conscience" and "freedom of religion" is false. The belief that an entire nation of men can persevere in virtue without belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace is false. Our situation was bound to unfold as it has despite the best intentions of the the nation's founders and the first bishop of United States of America, something that I noted Bound To Come To This Point two months ago now (and has been repeated, of course, quite endlessly on this site).

It is no surprise, therefore, that the falsely named United States Conference of Catholic "Bishops" has invoked the spirit of Archbishop John Carroll's principal American hagiographer and apologist, James Cardinal Gibbons, who was the Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, from October 3, 1877, to March 24, 1921, in its promotion of "religious liberty" as "“Our First, Most Cherished Freedom," a document that proves every single point I made in Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics and Contributed to Conciliarism.

Gibbons was praised by his admirers, the false "bishops" of a false church, for the sermon he delivered upon taking possession of the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in 1887 that defended "religious liberty" in the United States of America as having been beneficial to the country and to the growth of Catholic Church in it.

In 1887, when the archbishop of Baltimore, James Gibbons, was made the second American cardinal, he defended the American heritage of religious liberty during his visit to Rome to receive the red hat. Speaking of the great progress the Catholic Church had made in the United States, he attributed it to the "civil liberty we enjoy in our enlightened republic." Indeed, he made a bolder claim, namely that "in the genial atmosphere of liberty [the Church] blossoms like a rose."1

From well before Cardinal Gibbons, Catholics in America have been advocates for religious liberty, and the landmark teaching of the Second Vatican Council on religious liberty was influenced by the American experience. It is among the proudest boasts of the Church on these shores. We have been staunch defenders of religious liberty in the past. We have a solemn duty to discharge that duty today.

 

Yes, the false currents of the Potomac River really did flow into the Tiber River to sweep away the assembled bishops at the "Second" Vatican Council into supporting Dignitatis Humanae, which was approved in a vote taken on December 7, 1965, the last full day of the council's deliberations before Giovanni Montini/Paul VI closed it officially the next day on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You, see my few and, at least for the most part (noting the six people who have made non-tax-deductible gifts via PayPal in the past week and the one person who sent such a gift in via the organized lottery system known as the United States Postal Service), freeloading readers (yes, another huge hint that would not be made unless other hints had gone unheeded), I am not the one who has made up anything about the influences of Americanism on the "Second" Vatican Council. The Americanists keep telling us this in their own words. Americanism is one the fundamental building blocks of conciliarism. And it simply does not matter how many people get tired of reading this. Truth is truth.

While volume two of Conversion in Reverse will explore in great detail and in all of its nuances the conflicts that took place in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century between the Americanist and anti-Americanist bishops here in the United States of America--and the conflicts that took place between Roman authorities and the Americanist bishops, itself a topic fraught with complexity as a result of a fear of creating a formal schism between the American bishops and Rome, suffice it to say for the present moment that James Cardinal Gibbons believed that the United States of America was a "laboratory," if you will, of "new ideas" that would benefit the Catholic Church as she "adapted" herself to the mythical entity called the "modern world" that was born, it should be noted, as a direct result of the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church and to order man's temporal affairs in light of his Last End, the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Thus it is that Cardinal Gibbons did not believe that Pope Leo XIII's reiteration of the the Church's condemnation of "freedom of conscience" in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, applied to the United States of America.

Here is the relevant section of Immortale Dei:

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.

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

 

In other words, although Pope Leo XIII always made the proper distinctions between tolerating the propagation of evil in lands where the children of Holy Mother Church found themselves in a minority of the population and the acceptance of the propagation of evil as a "civil right" that came from God Himself, Pope Leo XIII condemned the very sort of "freedom of conscience" promoted by the Americanists. It was in large measure because of this that Gibbons addressed the issue religious liberty in 1887, something that was noted by a pro-Gibbons writer by the name of Michael Sean Winters:

Pope Pius IX’s 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura, which included the promulgation of the Syllabus of Errors, began as a reply to a speech by Charles de Montalembert calling for the reconciliation of the church with democracy. Montalembert titled his speech “A Free Church in a Free State.” None could question the religious devotion of this noble Frenchman, but the pope saw nothing but ruin coming from the French Revolution and its progeny. Pope Leo XIII declared in his 1885 encyclical Immortale Dei that the church was not committed to any particular form of government and that she could work with all, but he also went on to condemn freedom of religion and freedom of the press as threats to civil society and true religion.

This, then, was the context for Gibbons’ heroic address at Santa Maria in Trastevere. Despite the condemnations found in papal teaching, he held that the constitutional arrangements in America, specifically the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment, were a blessing to the Catholic church in the United States. In America, liberalism was not anti-clerical, as attested to by the many letters of congratulations Gibbons had received upon his elevation to the Sacred College from non-Catholics. The president of the United States, Grover Cleveland, had received Gibbons at the White House immediately before his departure for Rome.

As Gibbons descended the pulpit in Santa Maria he had set down a marker. “Here was the gauntlet of the benefit of American religious liberty thrown down by the new world to the old, which could not understand it until the Second Vatican Council,” writes Jesuit Fr. Gerald Fogarty. (Freedom and Catholics.)

 

What do I keep telling you, huh? The Modernists are very proud of their "accomplishments." They openly boast about how their ideological forebears paved the way for the "Second" Vatican Council, which is what, financing permitting (and I am going need some kind of subsidy to be able to have a block of time to complete volume two of Conversion in Reverse as volume one has brought in precisely seventy-eight dollars in the past five months), volume two of Conversion in Reverse will be able to demonstrate in great detail for those who are interested.

One who is not possessed of the jingoistic, nationalist myths of Americanism sees the events of the Nineteenth Century in their true light as but foreshadowing the apostasy of our own times. Unlike Michael Sean Winters and the conciliar "bishops" who released their recent paean of praise in behalf of "religious liberty," the late Dr. Justin Walsh understood James Cardinal Gibbons 1887 sermon in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere for exactly what it was: heresy in the making. Dr. Walsh explained in an article in The Angelus magazine how Pope Leo XIII's Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, was a complete repudiation of the Gibbons view of religious liberty:

 

It was clear by 1895 that Americanist views were incompatible with orthodox Catholicism. In the spiritual realm Keane was hell-bent on fostering interdenominational congresses. In the temporal realm Ireland, and to a lesser extent Gibbons, had peculiar penchants for meddling in things better left alone by Churchmen. In such a situation action by Rome was inevitable. It came on January 6 when Leo XIII addressed Longinqua Oceani to American bishops.

The Pope began by noting that the United States had a "good Constitution" and as a result Catholicism was unhindered, protected alike by law and the impartial administration of justice. Nonetheless the Holy Father warned...:

...it would be an error to conclude that America furnishes an example of the ideal condition for the Church or that it is always lawful and expedient that civil and religious affairs should be disjoined and kept apart....

According to the Pope, in a formal letter addressed to all American bishops, it would be an error to say that religious liberty and the separation of Church and State were beneficial to the Catholic Church. In explicit refutation of Gibbons's notion that American liberty caused the Church to "blossom like a rose," the Pope asserted that if the Catholic religion "is safe among you and is even blessed with increase" it was "entirely due to the divine fruitfulness of the Church." He concluded tellingly that "the fruit would be still more abundant if the Church enjoyed not only liberty but the favor of...laws and...protection of the public power."13

Few, if any, heeded the Holy Father's warnings. They redoubled their efforts, with immediately dire consequences for Denis O'Connell and John Keane. O'Connell fell first when, in the summer of 1895, he was removed as rector of the North American College. His cohorts unsuccessfully defended him, although Gibbons did succeed in keeping him in Rome as rector of the Cardinal's titular church. From this vantage point O'Connell became "a kind of liaison officer of the American hierarchy, and more particularly its left wing" until he returned to the US in 1903.14 Catholic liberals claim that "the suppositious liberalism of the Catholic University" was responsible for the dismissal in 1896 of John J. Keane. In fact the liberalism of neither the CUA nor its rector was "suppositious." As the California Volksfreund noted, "It was clear enough from the beginning that Americanism was interwoven with the plan for the...University." This newspaper called instead for something that Keane could never provide: "a Catholic University with Catholic professors [where] the doctrine of the Catholic, and not of an American Church, is taught. (Dr. Justin Walsh, Heresy Blossoms Like a Rose.)

Mrs. Solange Hertz, writing in her landmark The Star Spangled Heresy: How the Catholic Church in America became the American Catholic Church, discussed how Pope Pius IX warned the progenitor of Americanism, Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, the founder of the Society of Saint Paul (the Paulist Fathers), that Americans were too busy immersed in the the pursuit of material wealth, a warning that the proud Americanist could simply not accept as being true as the Church had to made an "accommodation" to the modern world:

In a private audience Pius IX tactfully suggested to him, "The Americans are so engrossed in worldly pursuits and in getting money, and these things are not favorable to religion. It's not I who say this, but our Lord in the Gospel. In the United States there exists a liberty too unrestrained; all the refugees and revolutionaries gather there." Hecker persisted nonetheless in tailoring the Gospel to American vices in order to spread the Faith, while [Bishop John Joseph] Keane [who was born in Ireland and a staunch Americanist] lectured at the Brussels Congress on "the ultimate religion of the future," speaking to all who would listen (and would who would not) of "letting down the bars" and "development of dogma" following on a "grand opening of windows" such as we now have. A great admirer of [German Chancellor and virulently anti-Catholic Otto von) Bismarck, he had the effrontery to toast the enemy of Christianity along with Leo XIII and Gladstone at a banquet in Washington. (Solange Hertz, The Star Spangled Heresy: How the Catholic Church in America became the American Catholic Church, Veritas Press, 1992, p. 151.)

 

Who wrote about the necessity of "demolition of the bastions," a variation of "letting down the bars"? Um, let me see. Ah, yes, I've got it. I remember now just in the event that you have forgotten:

Does this mean that the Council should be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the "demolition of the bastions" is a long-overdue task. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 391)

 

Who believes in the "development of dogma"?

Who believes in the precepts of Americanism?

That's right. "Pope" Benedict XVI.

It is thus laughable that Americanists such as the conciliar "bishops" in the United States of America, who have not, it should be pointed out once again, sued the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama over the health-insurance mandate to provide contraception and "family planning" services and who have not defend the rights of individual Catholic employers or, noting one or two exceptions, said word one about the evil that is contraception in se, are invoking the Americanist principle of "religious liberty" to speak against the health insurance mandate as it is that very principle that made the election of a statist such as Obama inevitable.

Remember, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI said the following to Barack Hussein Obama when they met in the Apostolic Palace on July 10, 2009:

"A blessing on all your work and also for you." (Benedict XVI meets Obama - Catholic Herald Online)

 

Behold the "work" of Barack Hussein Obama. Behold the Obama administration as simply the penultimate expression of Americanism that helped to give rise to the apostasies of the "Second" Vatican Council and the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes." Yes, it's a straight line path from John Carroll to James Gibbons to Timothy Dolan. A straight line path.

Obviously, we must, as always, spend time in prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament and pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, using the shield of Our Lady's Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and the weapon of her Rosary to protect us from the contagion of apostasy and betrayal that is all around us. We must also, of course, make reparation for our own many sins by offering up all of our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices and humiliations and penances and mortifications and fastings to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

This will all pass. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest, and it will be a triumph beyond all telling.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us, on this your feast day!

Saint John the Baptist, 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

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?