From The Potomac To the Tiber and Back

by Thomas A. Droleskey

One of the chief tools used by those whose person or work has been criticized is to lash out in emotional tirades, accusing critics of "hating" them or of being "filled with hatred" or of being "obsessed" with what they believe to be a "minor" point or what is considered to be a fact of insignificance. This is one of the chief means employed by naturalists of the false opposite of the "left" to seek to discredit anyone and everyone who criticizes them. Former President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and our currently reigning Caesar Ignoramus, Barack Hussein Obama, are past masters of this kind of emotional demagoguery and deceit. So was the man who was the Governor of the State of New York from January 1, 1983, to January 1, 1995, Mario Matthew Cuomo.

Such was the case with then New York Governor Mario Matthew Cuomo when he was warned in 1990 by an auxiliary "bishop" of the Archdiocese of New York, the late Bishop Austin Vaughan, a true priest who was as good and kind of a pastor of souls as one could ever meet, risked the fires of Hell if he did not repent of his public support for abortion. Not one to take kindly to clerical rebukes, Cuomo, who once telephoned the pastor of Holy Family Church in Hicksville, New York, in the 1980s to complain of his having been criticized in a sermon one Sunday, Cuomo acted the part of the demagogue and said publicly that Bishop Vaughan had "damned him to Hell." Bishop Vaughan had done no such thing. Putting aside the issue of the illegitimacy of the conciliar bishops, Bishop Austin Vaughan understood the obligations imposed upon the soul of one who believed himself to be a bishop. He knew that he had an obligation to warn a wayward sheep of the eternal peril into which he placed himself for supporting one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, a fundamental act of true Charity on the part of any Catholic. Bishop Vaughan had no more "damned" Mario Cuomo to Hell than a physician "condemns" a patient to death if he warns him that he, the patient, runs the risk of shortening his physical life by refusing to lose weight. Demagogues always prefer to denounce their critics than to accept criticism with grace and gratitude.

Indeed, many defenders of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI resort to this vile smear tactic of emotionalism as they seek to deflect the very points that some of them used to make on a very regular basis about the current "pontiff's" Modernism and embrace of the New Theology by claiming, for example, that those who assert that Walter "Cardinal" Kasper speaks for himself without "papal" approval although they themselves used to hold Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II responsible for every word uttered by Kasper, who remains in great favor with Ratzinger/Benedict as he accompanies the "false pontiff" to the Rome synagogue and to a Lutheran church building and represents him in addresses delivered before various groups of Protestants and the Orthodox. No one who points these things out is guilty of "rash judgment" or of having "hatred" in his heart for a man who who has shown his contempt for the binding precepts of the First and Second Commandments by esteeming publicly the symbols of false religions and calling temples of false worship as "sacred."

Similarly, even many traditionally-minded Catholics use this kind of demagoguery to denounce those who point out the false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles of the American founding as being "anti-American" and "unpatriotic." Some go so far as to claim that those who point out these indisputable facts are "ungrateful" to God for having placed in this country and/or of rebelling against God's Holy Providence which permitted this nation to be founded in the first place.

Such emotional red-herrings, which are really no nothing more than expressions of the ideology of nationalism (the exaggerated exaltation of a nation and its myths above all else, including the immutably binding Social Teaching of the Catholic Church) that have nothing at all to do with true love of one's nation as authentic patriotism wills the good of one's nation, the ultimate expression of which is her conversion of her to the true Faith by means of the conversion of everyone within her boundaries to the true Faith. Can't be done, you say? Why did the Apostles leave the Upper Room in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost Sunday after the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, descended upon them in tongues of flame? They left there to convert all men and all nations to the true Faith in perfect fidelity to these words spoken before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ before He ascended to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father on Ascension Thursday, forty days after His Resurrection on Easter Sunday:

And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And seeing him they adored: but some doubted. And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Matthew 28: 16-20.)

 

The United States of America is not an exception to this injunction.

Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 to convert the Americas, which consist (at least the last time I looked a glob) of South and North America. And I do believe that Mexico is on the North American continent.

The North American Martyrs shed their blood at the hands of savage barbarians in what is now southern Canada and Auriesville, New York, between 1642 and 1648 did not do so to advance pluralism or false ecumenism. They shed their blood to bear witness to the Catholic Faith as they prayed for the souls of their torturers and executors, praying that the land so hallowed by the blood of  their very martyrdom would be converted to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

The errors of the American founding have convinced ordinary, believing Catholics all across the vast spectrum of the ecclesiastical divide that it is not necessary for the civil government to recognize the Catholic Church as the true religion and that it is "good enough" for Catholics to have the "freedom" to practice their Faith privately without the overt kind of vicious, blood persecution that our spiritual ancestors suffered at the hands of the English in England and Ireland following the onset of the Protestant Revolution there in 1534 with King Henry VIII had himself declared "supreme head of the church in England.

It is indeed ironic that the Protestant Revolution in England against the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ made possible the rise of the unchecked tyranny of English monarchs for much of the two centuries thereafter, thereby predisposing Americans all of religious denominations in the thirteen English colonies settled up and down the Atlantic seaboard in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries to recoil at the thought of a monarchical form of governance as even possible of fostering a just social order, and at the same time established the theological and liturgical precedents for conciliarism itself, whose current "pontiff" is accepting certain Anglican liturgical rites condemned as heretical by Pope Saint Pius V in Regnans in Excelsis (March 5, 1570) and who continues to praise an allegedly "Catholic" liturgical "reform" that wreaks of Protestantism. It is no exaggeration to state that the revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King started in England by King Henry VIII and institutionalized by his daughter by Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I, in torrents upon torrents of Catholic blood presaged a naturalistic reaction against the monarchical despotism that it made possible while at the same time in the English colonies that became the first thirteen states of the United States of America it brought about the very first manifestation of the heresy of "religious liberty" that would become one of the cornerstones of the French revolutionaries thirteen years later.

To recapitulate some basic points that I have made over and over and over again my speaking and writing in the past twenty years:

1. The American founders, many of whom reviled and blasphemed and mocked Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church (see A Founding Hatred for Christ the King), did not believe that it was necessary for men to subordinate themselves, either individually in their own lives or collectively within the body politic, to the Deposit of Faith that Our Divine Redeemer has revealed exclusively to Holy Mother Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. This is, no matter their good intentions as sons of the Protestant Revolution and of the Enlightenment, erroneous as Catholicism is but the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

2. The Americans founders believed that it was possible to maintain a good sense of social order as long as men pursue what they called "civic virtue," whether this virtue was pursued by naturalistic means or by one of a variety of religious beliefs was a matter of complete indifference to them. The founders believed that an entire nation of men could pursue virtue on a sustained basis without belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. This is the essence of semi-Pelagianism, the heretical belief that men more or less "stir up graces" in themselves to sanctify and to thus save their immortal souls. It is the essence of what can be called the "American way," that "Americans" can do anything they put their minds to doing. Ah, we don't take our next breath without God willing that we do so.

3. As inheritors of Protestantism's legacy of the "written word" and rejection of Sacred or Apostolic Tradition that has been preserved whole and undiluted by the Catholic Church for nearly two millennia, the framers of the Constitution believed that the plain meaning of words of that document's text could be preserved from misinterpretation in the future, heedless of the fact that men will consider themselves free to deconstruct (that is, to re-define a word or a phrase or a passage in light of "contemporary needs" in such a manner as to contract the actual, objective meaning of a word or a phrase or a passage of written text) a written civil constitution as those who have revolted against the Catholic Church consider themselves free to deconstruct the inspired words of Holy Writ and to cast aside Sacred Tradition and the teaching authority of Holy Mother Church in the name "of individual interpretation." If men reject the Catholic Church as the foundation of personal and social order, you see, then men will always be at the mercy of the whims and transitory, naturalistic beliefs of whoever happens to constitute a majority in the institutions of civil government, which is nothing other than a formula for social degeneration over the course of time. (See A Catechism of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Not A Mention of Christ the King.)

4. Once again, by way of reemphasizing distinctions made repeatedly on this site, to point out the false naturalistic precepts that are at the foundation of the modern civil state, including that of the United States of America, is not to condemn the specific institutional arrangements that God and Holy Mother Church leave to the free choice of men to make in accord with legitimate national traditions and the specific contingent conditions of history. Holy Mother Church has long taught that she can adapt herself to any legitimate form of government. She does not possess the competency to interfere with men to choose to have a civil government with a presidential-congressional form or a parliamentary-ministerial form. Holy Mother Church does not interfere with men as they choose to have a unitary, confederal or federal form of national government organization in its relation to sub-national governments (state, provincial, local). She requires only that each nation in the world recognize her as the true religion and to yield to her teaching authority in all matters that pertain to the good of souls, demanding that men who serve in civil government understand that they have the solemn duty from God Himself to discharge the authority that it is justly theirs in the temporal sphere to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End.

5. Holy Mother Church does not expect the impossible from her children, which is why she has urged them to make use of the "liberties" accorded them in pluralist societies such as the United States of America to advance the cause of the Holy Faith as best as they are able. Although Holy Mother Church makes these concessions in the practical order of things in the recognition that she cannot always assert her God-given rights in every place or at every point in human history, she never ceases to preach her immutable Social Teaching and she never ceases to exhort her children to pray and to work for the conversion of their fellow countrymen and and of their countries to the true Faith.

6. Pope Leo XIII explained these points in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, praising what he could of those things in the Constitution of the United States of America that were in accord a well-ordered republic, praising even the natural virtue of George Washington, while at the same time explaining that the advance of the Faith in the United States of America was the working of God the Holy Ghost, not the American Constitution because it was not overtly hostile to the Catholic Church and granted certain "liberties" to her children as well as rank unbelievers, and that more abundant graces would flow if the civil state recognized Holy Mother Church as the true religion and accorded her the favor and protection of the laws:

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.

 

Pope Leo XIII knew that the American bishops were not teaching his social encyclical letters from the pulpit, which is why he reminded in the following passage from Longiqua Oceani that they had the obligation to do so:

As regards civil affairs, experience has shown how important it is that the citizens should be upright and virtuous. In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied with the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs. On this whole subject there are to be found, as you know, in the encyclical letters written by Us from time to time in the course of Our pontificate, many things which Catholics should attend to and observe. In these writings and expositions We have treated of human liberty, of the chief Christian duties, of civil government, and of the Christian constitution of States, drawing Our principles as well from the teaching of the Gospels as from reason. They, then, who wish to be good citizens and discharge their duties faithfully may readily learn from Our Letters the ideal of an upright life.

 

It is not to be "anti-American" to point out any of this. It is simply to point out that any false idea leads logically to bad consequences over the course of time no matter the good intentions of those who believe very sincerely in those false ideas. If it is "un" or "anti" American  to point out the false ideas of the American founding as having produced the dire consequences that we face in our nation today, then it is also "un" or "anti" Catholic to point out the false ideas of conciliarism that have produced such chaos in the institutional structures that most people associate with the Catholic Church. Correcting falsehood is Supernatural Act of Charity (instructing the ignorant, admonishing the sinner), not an act of "disloyalty" to one's nation, who numbered among its founders men, as noted above, who hated Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Holy Church.

The naturalistic ethos of the American founding created the Americanist heresy that clouds the minds of so many Catholics in the United States of America to this very day. Yet it is a fact that Americanism is one of the fundamental building blocks of Modernism--and hence of concilairism. Americanism was condemned decisively by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.

Pope Leo XIII understood that many Catholics in the United States of America were being influenced quite insidiously over the course of time by the various constituent parts of Americanism, including "exceptionalism," the belief that God Himself had destined the United States of America to be the signal nation to pave the way for "civil" and "religious freedom," and pluralism and separation of Church and State and unfettered freedom of speech and press. These influences would result, Pope Leo XII recognized, in a situation where many Catholics in this country would view the Church through the lens of Americanism rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith as they planted seeds for the establishment of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

 

Pope Leo XIII explained near the end of his Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, the Americanist archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 to the time of his death in 1921, that he feared that at least some of the American bishops did indeed desire the American model of the religiously indifferentist civil state, which is so praised by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, to be adopted by the Church herself as the means of "reconciling" herself to the "modern" world:

For it [an adherence to the condemned precepts of Americanism] would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive of and desire the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

 

Pope Leo XIII was not just a whistlin' Dixie. The Americanists themselves had spoken boldly of their intention of using the American regime, based on an indifference to the true religion and on the belief that men could be virtuous on their own powers without belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace, as the foundation of a veritable "new world order" based on the myth of American exceptionalism. Monsignor Henri Delassus documented the beliefs of Americanism's very own "founding father," Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, concerning the "universal" mission of Americanism to "evangelize" the Church, if you will, by quoting one of Hecker's early biographers, Abbot Klein:

"American Catholicism" is not, in the thought of is promoters, a way of thinking and of practicing Catholicism solely in the contingent and changing things that would be common to the United States, in accordance with the particular conditions that are found on American soil. If this had been so, we would not have believed it incumbent upon us to be concerned with it.

No, their pretension is to speak to the entire universe: "The ear of the world is open to our thinking, if we know what to say to them," Msgr. [Bishop of Richmond, John] Keane had written to the Congress of Brussels. And in fact they are speaking, and their word has not been without echo upon each part of France. If, at least, they had not put into the ear of the world anything other than what the Church leaves to our free discussion; but, no, as we shall see, we shall come to understand that their words are more or less imposed upon that which belongs to the very fundamentals of the Catholic faith.

The Abbot Klein had said in the preface he gave to The Life of Fr. Hecker: "His [Fr. Hecker's] unique and original work is to have shown the profound harmonies joining the new state of the human spirit to the true Christianity." "The American ideas that he recommended are, he knew, those which GOD wanted all civilized people of our time to be at home with  ..."

"The times are solemn," Msgr. Ireland had said, in his discourse, The Church and the Age. "At such an epoch of history ... the desire to know is intense ... The ambition of the spirit, fired up by the marvelous success in every field of human knowledge ... The human heart lets itself go to the strangest ideals ... Something new! Such is the ordered word of humanity, and to renew all things is its firm resolution.

"The moment is opportune for men of talent and character among the children of the Church of God. Today the routine of old times is dead;  today the ordinary means lead to the decrepitude of the aged; the crisis demands something new, something extraordinary; and it is upon this condition that the Church shall record the greatest of victories in the greatest of historical ages" (Discourse given in the Cathedral of Baltimore, October 18, 1893, on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Episcopal consecration of Cardinal Gibbons.) (Monsignor Henri Delassus, Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, available from Catholic Action Resource Center, pp. 9-10.)

 

These beliefs are firmly engrained in the minds of most Catholics in the United States of America. They believe, as I did for the first thirty-five years of my life, that Catholicism and every single aspect of the American founding with perfectly compatible, that it is neither necessary or wise even to seek the conversion of the country to the true Faith. It is not an exaggeration to state that the laissez-faire "ecumenism" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism had its origins, at least in part, here in the United States of America just as conciliarism's embrace of "religious liberty" and the separation of Church and State, both of which had been condemned by pope after pope prior to October 9, 1958, has predominantly Americanist roots. The errors of Americanism have flowed from the Potomac River to the Tiber River and then back again as they have been enshrined in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic ethos of the Novus Ordo liturgical service.

As has been noted on other occasions on this site, it was only the graces flowing from the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that kept most Catholics attentive to their interior lives of prayer and to the Holy Mother Church's disciplinary practices. The abandonment of even the two different modernized versions of the Traditional Mass that were in effect from 1961 to 1969 and the loss of true bishops and true priests over time helped to expedite the paganization of the lives of many Catholics, including those who still bother to show up at the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service which is a celebration of the spirit of Modernity, to say nothing of those who have quit the practice of the Faith altogether. This predisposes Catholics to flock to every error of Modernity imaginable, usually dividing along the naturalistic ideological fault lines of the false opposites of the "right" and the "left."

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has celebrated the American founding and its commitment to "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State" even though both have been condemned time and time again by one true pope after another when these errors began to manifest themselves at the end of the Eighteenth Century and thereafter. He has done so by making advertence to his "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" in order to make anathematized and/or condemned propositions seem in perfect accord with the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church.

Ratzinger/Benedict knows that the errors of religious liberty, denounced as heretical by Pope Pius VII in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 28, 1814, and as "insanity" by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, and separation of Church and State, which was termed a "thesis absolutely false" by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, are in contradiction to conciliarism's embrace of them. This is why he has had to invent his absurd "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" to seek to justify them, blaspheming God the Holy Ghost in the process by saying in his famous December 22, 2005, Christmas address to the member of his curia that "it was necessary to learn" that past pronouncements can be understood anew as the terms in which they were expressed were "contingent" on the historical circumstances that produced them, meaning that God the Holy Ghost kept this "knowledge" from true popes who reiterated Catholic teaching repeatedly right up until the time of the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.

Ratzinger/Benedict is forever bewailing the influence of irreligion in the world, urging the "world's religions" to join together against it, oblivious to the simple truth that the prevalence of irreligion in the world today is the logical 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 the institutionalization of naturalism as normative even in the life of believing Catholics in nations committed to "pluralism" by the combined, inter-related and multifaceted forces of Judeo-Masonry and the various "salvific" naturalist or secularist ideologies that have sprung from it. How can false religions fight irreligion when it is the proliferation and social acceptance of false religions in the past half of a millennium that have produced irreligion as a force in the world today? Ratzinger/Benedict seems incapable of understanding this simple truth as it is contrary to his conciliarist world view.

A thoughtful, perceptive reader found an article from last year in this regard that he thought would interest the readers of this site:

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.”

“Here it is,” Medvedev told reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. “You can see it and touch it.”

The coin, which bears the words “unity in diversity,” was minted in Belgium and presented to the heads of G-8 delegations, Medvedev said.

The question of a supranational currency “concerns everyone now, even the mints,” Medvedev said. The test coin “means they’re getting ready. I think it’s a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are.”

Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the U.S. dollar’s future as a global reserve currency. Russia’s proposals for the G-20 meeting in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency. (Medvedev Shows Off Sample Coin.)

 

The reader expressed amazement that the forces of the New World Order were expressing themselves in the exact language of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Walter "Cardinal" Kasper and the rest of the conciliar crew. I responded as follows:

The two are joined at the hip. Remember, the motto of this country is "E Pluribus Unum." Americanism is really the cornerstone of Modernism, including false ecumenism. Conciliarism is the ape of Americanism, which is an expression of Judeo-Masonry's naturalism, not the other way around.

 

Unity in diversity. Unity in multiplicity Multiplicity in unity. It's all the foundation of the modern civil state, the slogan to justify the thoroughly Judeo-Masonic belief that it does not make any difference what religion men believe, if any, as long as they are "good" people who are sincerely motivated to work together with their brothers and sisters for the establishment and maintenance of peace, justice, harmony and a sense of loving coexistence with each other. Ratzinger/Benedict himself has himself said that peace is the produce of the "coexistence of religions," praising this "coexistence" (see (RELIGIONS ARE A FORCE FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIATION) repeatedly. And it was in Fatima, just last month Portugal, that Ratzinger/Benedict praised the "civilization" of love that represents conciliarism's taking the 'best" from Modernity to show its "solidarity" with the people of the world, producing that vaunted "civilization of love" spoken of so repeatedly by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II:

From a wise vision of life and of the world, the just ordering of society follows. Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life. The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom. What matters is the value attributed to the problem of meaning and its implication in public life. By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church, to which the two concordats of 1940 and 2004 would give shape, in cultural settings and ecclesial perspectives profoundly marked by rapid change. For the most part, the sufferings caused by these transformations have been faced with courage. Living amid a plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks requires a journey to the core of one’s being and to the nucleus of Christianity so as to reinforce the quality of one’s witness to the point of sanctity, and to find mission paths that lead even to the radical choice of martyrdom. (Official Reception at Lisbon Portela International Airport, Tuesday, May 11, 2010.)

Precisely so as “to place the modern world in contact with the life-giving and perennial energies of the Gospel” (John XXIII, Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis, 3), the Second Vatican Council was convened. There the Church, on the basis of a renewed awareness of the Catholic tradition, took seriously and discerned, transformed and overcame the fundamental critiques that gave rise to the modern world, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In this way the Church herself accepted and refashioned the best of the requirements of modernity by transcending them on the one hand, and on the other by avoiding their errors and dead ends. The Council laid the foundation for an authentic Catholic renewal and for a new civilization – “the civilization of love” – as an evangelical service to man and society.

Dear friends, the Church considers that her most important mission in today’s culture is to keep alive the search for truth, and consequently for God; to bring people to look beyond penultimate realities and to seek those that are ultimate. I invite you to deepen your knowledge of God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ for our complete fulfilment. Produce beautiful things, but above all make your lives places of beauty. May Our Lady of Belém intercede for you, she who has been venerated down through the centuries by navigators, and is venerated today by the navigators of Goodness, Truth and Beauty. (Meeting with the world of culture in the Cultural Center of Belém, Wednesday, May 12, 2010.)

 

"Pope" Benedict XVI thus embraced the very separation of Church and State in Portugal that was condemned forcefully by Pope Saint Pius X in Iamdudum, May 24, 1911 (see Mocking Pope Saint Pius X and Our Lady of Fatima). His embrace of the "best of the requirements of modernity" was condemned by Pope Pius IX and mocked by Pope Leo XIII, among others:

In truth, on the face of this earth there is but one true and holy Religion, founded and established by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself; this Religion – the fecund mother, the nurturer of all virtues, the enemy of vice, the liberator of souls and the mistress of true happiness – is called Catholic, Apostolic and Roman.

We have already spoken about what we should think of those who live outside of this ark of salvation in the consistory allocution of December 9, 1854, and here we confirm that same doctrine.

To those who, for the good of Religion, invite us to extend our hand to contemporary civilization, we ask whether the Vicar of Christ, divinely established by Christ to preserve the purity of His heavenly doctrine and to nourish and confirm His lambs and sheep in this same doctrine, could join forces with contemporary civilization without a very grave danger of conscience and causing the greatest of scandals. For it was this civilization that produced evils so numerous that we could never deplore them sufficiently, as well as so many poisonous opinions, errors and principles which are extremely opposed to the Catholic Religion and her doctrine. (Pius IX, Allocution Jamdudum cernimus, March 18, 1861, in Recueil des Allocutions consistoriales, encycliques et autres lettres apostoliques, Paris: Adrien Leclere, 1865, p. 435, found at  Pope Cannot Accept Modern Civilization.)

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

 

The spirit of concilairism is the spirit of Modernity, which is the spirit of the diabolical admixture of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry. No nation can be truly "one" unless that is a true brotherhood among its citizens effected by the bonds of the Holy Faith, bonds that unite them to other Catholics worldwide in fealty to a true and legitimate Roman Pontiff, bonds that make them defenders of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen. We are merely seeing the universal manifestation of Americanism as predicted in glowing terms by Father Isaac Thomas Hecker's biographer, Abbot Klein. Behold the wretched results as the conciliar "popes" help to reinforce the very falsehoods have dethroned Christ the King enshrined men as sovereign "kings" over their own affairs, both personally and socially.

Catholicism is the one and only foundation of social order. You have heard this before? You will keep hearing until the day I die or the day that I am unable to continue work on this site as a result of physical and/or mental infirmity, whichever shall first occur (and I realize that some of you believe that the latter condition obtains at the present time). Catholicism is the only and only foundation of personal and social order. Period.

You continue to doubt this? Well, consider once again these words of Pope Saint Pius X, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

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.

 

 

We must enfold ourselves into the love of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as we make reparation for our own many sins, which are so responsible for the worsening of the state of the Church Militant on earth and of the world-at-large, as we seek to restore all things in Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Saint Aloysius, whose blessed life we celebrate today, was a great lover of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. We must pray to him to help us increase our fervor for Eucharistic piety as we spend at least a few moments, if at all possible, with Our Prisoner of love in the Tabernacle Who beckons us to watch with Him. It is Eucharistic piety that can, if Our Lord's Real Presence is available nearby, that can keep us close to Sacred Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits. (Those who live in a spiritual desert without the Real Presence of Our Lord nearby can make Spiritual Communions throughout the day and send their Guardian Angels to pray for them in front of a tabernacle where He is truly present.)

The Rosary, the Rosary, the Rosary. Use it well. The enemies of Christ the King within in our souls and in the world-at-large will be defeated by Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary and the fulfillment of her Fatima Message.

This is all the more reason to unite ourselves as one this year as we did last year with Bishop Robert F. McKenna's Bishop McKenna's Rosary Crusade, which begins next Saturday, June 26, 2010, and runs through Saturday, October 2, 2010, just prior to Rosary Sunday, October 3, 2010.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Saint Joseph, 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 Aloysius, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendices

The Popes Contra The Errors of the Religiously Indifferent and Anti-Incarnational Civil State of Modernity

Appendix A

Pope Gregory XVI on Religious Liberty and Free Speech and Free Press

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.)

Appendix B

Pope Pius IX Condemning Liberty of Conscience as found in the Modern civil state

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

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

Appendix C

Pope Leo XIII on the Duties of Catholics to Defend Catholic Truth in Public

But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

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. So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

Appendix D

Pope Leo XIII on the Degeneration of Nations Absent the Catholic Faith

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Appendix E

Pope Leo XIII: We Must Restore Catholicism

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely wise, good, and just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men.  It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the states and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption.  It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, it makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which It has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes  It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty.  Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)