Give Me Two Bayers, Please
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Oy vey! Oy, gevalt! Oy! Oy! Oy! Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has issued another "encyclical" letter. Give me two Bayers, please! Give me two extra-strength Bayers, please!
Ratzinger/Benedict's new encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate, dated on June 29, 2009, but issued yesterday, July 7, 2009, is a showcase of Modernism as it mixes truth and error. Indeed, Caritas in Veritate, has "elements" of Catholicism sprinkled throughout its one hundred forty-four pages. Despite those "elements" of Catholicism, including opposition to abortion and contraception and support, at least rhetorically, for the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity, Caritas in Veritate is a Modernist manifesto, an apologia, in behalf of the absurdity of a One World Government that "respects" subsidiarity and the slogan of "integral human development" that presupposes that a new world "financial order" can be built absent a conversion of men and their nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King, which is nowhere mentioned in Caritas in Veritate, as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church.
Here is the jaw-dropping passage from Caritas in Veritate wherein Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI expresses his full support for One World Government, a passage that would warm the cockles of the heart of a grand master of any local Masonic lodge's heart
In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for right. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations. (Caritas in veritate, June 29, 2009.)
This is insanity. Each of the problems that Ratzinger/Benedict lists in his encyclical letter, including the rise of the unbridled marketplace that is defined by the pursuit of profit at all costs and the outsourcing of jobs, two of the many phenomena of the modern world that Ratzinger/Benedict rightly condemns in Caritas in Veritate, is the direct and inexorable result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and institutionalized by the rise of Judeo-Masonry. The multifaceted and interrelated problems and massive injustices that have arisen as a result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King cannot be resolved by some kind of utopian "world political authority" that is going to have "teeth" while at the same time respecting the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity enunciated by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, as it respects the right to life and the rights of families and promotes "integral human development." In all Charity, my friends, the truth of the matter is that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is stark raving mad to believe that such a One World Government could provide a structure for order and justice in the world, and that is putting the matter mildly and as charitably as is humanly possible. Need one point out that one of the chief goals of Talmudic Judaism has been to create such a One World Government?
Although quoted just two days ago in L'Osservatore del Calvinista, it is worth repeating the late Dr. George O'Brien's sober description of how the modern economic order came into being:
The thesis we have endeavoured to present in this essay is, that the two great dominating schools of modern economic thought have a common origin. The capitalist school, which, basing its position on the unfettered right of the individual to do what he will with his own, demands the restriction of government interference in economic and social affairs within the narrowest possible limits, and the socialist school, which, basing its position on the complete subordination of the individual to society, demands the socialization of all the means of production, if not all of wealth, face each other today as the only two solutions of the social question; they are bitterly hostile towards each other, and mutually intolerant and each is at the same weakened and provoked by the other. In one respect, and in one respect only, are they identical--they can both be shown to be the result of the Protestant Reformation.
We have seen the direct connection which exists between these modern schools of economic thought and their common ancestor. Capitalism found its roots in the intensely individualistic spirit of Protestantism, in the spread of anti-authoritative ideas from the realm of religion into the realm of political and social thought, and, above all, in the distinctive Calvinist doctrine of a successful and prosperous career being the outward and visible sign by which the regenerated might be known. Socialism, on the other hand, derived encouragement from the violations of established and prescriptive rights of which the Reformation afforded so many examples, from the growth of heretical sects tainted with Communism, and from the overthrow of the orthodox doctrine on original sin, which opened the way to the idea of the perfectibility of man through institutions. But, apart from these direct influences, there were others, indirect, but equally important. Both these great schools of economic thought are characterized by exaggerations and excesses; the one lays too great stress on the importance of the individual, and other on the importance of the community; they are both departures, in opposite directions, from the correct mean of reconciliation and of individual liberty with social solidarity. These excesses and exaggerations are the result of the free play of private judgment unguided by authority, and could not have occurred if Europe had continued to recognize an infallible central authority in ethical affairs.
The science of economics is the science of men's relations with one another in the domain of acquiring and disposing of wealth, and is, therefore, like political science in another sphere, a branch of the science of ethics. In the Middle Ages, man's ethical conduct, like his religious conduct, was under the supervision and guidance of a single authority, which claimed at the same time the right to define and to enforce its teaching. The machinery for enforcing the observance of medieval ethical teaching was of a singularly effective kind; pressure was brought to bear upon the conscience of the individual through the medium of compulsory periodical consultations with a trained moral adviser, who was empowered to enforce obedience to his advice by the most potent spiritual sanctions. In this way, the whole conduct of man in relation to his neighbours was placed under the immediate guidance of the universally received ethical preceptor, and a common standard of action was ensured throughout the Christian world in the all the affairs of life. All economic transactions in particular were subject to the jealous scrutiny of the individual's spiritual director; and such matters as sales, loans, and so on, were considered reprehensible and punishable if not conducted in accordance with the Christian standards of commutative justice.
The whole of this elaborate system for the preservation of justice in the affairs of everyday life was shattered by the Reformation. The right of private judgment, which had first been asserted in matters of faith, rapidly spread into moral matters, and the attack on the dogmatic infallibility of the Church left Europe without an authority to which it could appeal on moral questions. The new Protestant churches were utterly unable to supply this want. The principle of private judgment on which they rested deprived them of any right to be listened to whenever they attempted to dictate moral precepts to their members, and henceforth the moral behaviour of the individual became a matter to be regulated by the promptings of his own conscience, or by such philosophical systems of ethics as he happened to approve. The secular state endeavoured to ensure that dishonesty amounting to actual theft or fraud should be kept in check, but this was a poor and ineffective substitute for the powerful weapon of the confessional. Authority having once broken down, it was but a single step from Protestantism to rationalism; and the way was opened to the development of all sorts of erroneous systems of morality. (George O'Brien,
An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003)
There is nothing short of the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith that can help to restore order and justice in matters of politics and economics, both of which must be undertaken with regard to a due subordination to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and in light of man's Last End. Indeed, as Pope Saint Pius X noted in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, civil government has a positive obligation to aid man in the pursuit of his Last End, something that Ratzinger/Benedict rejects out of hand:
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.
To quote the late thirty-seventh President of the United States of America, Richard Milhous Nixon, "make no mistake about it," Ratzinger/Benedict's call for a "world political authority" with "teeth," which is in and of itself a violation of the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity as it violates the legitimate sovereignty of nations, which, contrary to Ratzinger/Benedict's support for what amounts to a policy of unrestricted immigration, do indeed have rights in the Natural Law to placed just restrictions on the migration of foreign nationals into their lands. The Catholic Church has always supported the legitimate sovereignty of nations, keeping in mind, of course, that each nation must recognize Christ the King as its own true Sovereign, from Whom no one or no nation may ever declare "independence." There is no such discussion in Caritas in Veritate as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is an enemy of the Social Reign of Christ the King and thus of the very foundation of personal and social order, Catholicism.
While Ratzinger/Benedict did refer to the word "Catholics" once, use the words "Catholic" or "Catholic Church" or "Catholic Faith" once in his new "encyclical" letter, which contains just two gratuitous "cf" (confer) references out of one hundred fifty nine footnotes to the true popes prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism under Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII. He referred to "Christianity," which, unlike the true popes of the Catholic Church, each of whom used the word "Christianity" to refer solely to the Catholic Faith, in broad, general terms as the "true" religion, stating that it was necessary to "discern" which religions "take account of the need for emancipation and inclusivity, in the context of a truly universal human community." This is nothing other than more madness. Ratzinger/Benedict stated that the heresy of "religious freedom" does not mean "religious indifferentism" while at the same time refusing to state clearly and unequivocally that Catholicism is indeed the one and only true religion revealed by God and that Protestantism, which is proximately responsible for the rise of the modern, religiously indifferentist civil state and thus of an economic system founded on false premises, is hateful in the sight of God. Caritas in Veritate nowhere states that it is the duty of the civil state to recognize the true religion and to accord her the favor and the protection of the laws.
No, Ratzinger/Benedict, drawing upon Giovanni Montini/Paul VI's Populorum Progressio, March 26, 1967, and the "Second" Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, is content, as a good progenitor of and apologist for conciliarism, to have "Christianity" take a place in the "public square" of ideas, a notion that has been rejected by true pope after true pope in the late-Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries:
The Christian religion and other religions can offer their contribution to development only if God has a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions. The Church's social doctrine came into being in order to claim “citizenship status” for the Christian religion. Denying the right to profess one's religion in public and the right to bring the truths of faith to bear upon public life has negative consequences for true development. The exclusion of religion from the public square — and, at the other extreme, religious fundamentalism — hinders an encounter between persons and their collaboration for the progress of humanity. Public life is sapped of its motivation and politics takes on a domineering and aggressive character. Human rights risk being ignored either because they are robbed of their transcendent foundation or because personal freedom is not acknowledged. Secularism and fundamentalism exclude the possibility of fruitful dialogue and effective cooperation between reason and religious faith. Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development. (Caritas in veritate, June 29, 2009.)
Ratzinger's concept of "the Christian religion" includes Protestants and the Orthodox as members of the "Church of Christ" who are in an "imperfect" "communion" with each other but who together represent "Christianity." It is not enough for a generic understanding of "God" to have a "place in the public realm." The one and only true God Who has revealed Himself to us exclusively through the Catholic Church must reign over men and their nations, not merely have a "place" at the "table," so to speak, as the teaching authority of the true Church is placed on a level of equality with those of false religions. God is offended by such madness
Ratzinger/Benedict's "new ecclesiology," which has been critiqued so well by Bishop Donald Sanborn (Communion: Ratzinger's Ecumenical One-World Church,
The New Ecclesiology: An Overview, and
Ratzinger's Subsistent Error), is not the foundation for giving "God" a place in the "public square." Ratzinger/Benedict does indeed believe that the "Church of Christ," or "Christianity" is larger than the Catholic Church
Mr. Frank Rega, the author of Saint Francis and the Conversion of the Muslims, has made this exact point in a very cogent letter that he has written to The Remnant:
I have been looking into the "subsists" issue from the Vatican II Council: “This one Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic . . . This Church, constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him” (Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution, Lumen gentium, 8.2.)
As you know the VII church tried to explain the meaning of "subsists" a couple of years ago in this document: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070629_responsa-quaestiones_en.html
A close examination of it reveals some very interesting facts. The document goes out of its way to assure everyone that the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church are truly "identical." But their 'Church of Christ' ". . . is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them."
THEREFORE: Their 'Catholic Church' is also present and operative in these communities, since it is "identical" to the Church of Christ.
But we know that the pre-VII Roman Catholic Church would never consider itself present, operative and causing sanctification in these communities not in full communion with Peter.
For example: Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis #57:
"Finally, while by His grace He provides for the continual growth of the Church, He yet refuses to dwell through sanctifying grace in those members that are wholly severed from the Body."
Also Pope Eugene IV:
“The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot have a share in eternal happiness; but that they will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the Devil and his Angels (Matt 25: 41), unless they unite themselves to the Church before their death. . ." Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino, Denzinger n. 714
THEREFORE: the 'Catholic Church" of VII can not possibly be the same as the Pre-VII true Roman Catholic Church, since the VII church considers itself identical to that "Church of Christ" which operates in non-Catholic churches and communities.
ERGO: No surprise that Gian Maria Vian and his L'Osservatore Romano heap praise on Mr. Calvin, after all he is also part of the same "Church of Christ!"
No, I am not a sedevacantist, but I am more and more open to that approach as the only rational answer to the current state of the church. Peace, Frank Rega www.frankrega.com (I thank Mr. Rega for his permission to publish his excellent letter in the context of this article.)
It is absurd and heretical to consider members of heretical and schismatic sects as representing "Christianity" when, in fact, they dissent from numerous articles contained in the Deposit of Faith, starting with the fact that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded a visible, hierarchical Church upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Then again,
Writing in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, which is the very antithesis of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII's Pacem in Terris, April 11, 1963, and Ratzinger/Benedict's Caritas in Veritate, Pope Pius XI explained that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order, something that Pope Saint Pius X had, of course, noted in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.
Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)
Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.
When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.
There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
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. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
Conscious, of course, that Giovanni Montini/Paul VI's Populorum Progressio and the "magisterium" of the postconciliar "popes" have been criticized by many as representing a decisive break with the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church, Ratzinger/Benedict went to extraordinary lengths in Caritas in Veritate to make the positivistic assertion that there was a "continuity" between the social encyclicals of the true popes of the Catholic Church. This is a case, however, of the false "pontiff" protesting too much:
The link between Populorum Progressio and the Second Vatican Council does not mean that Paul VI's social magisterium marked a break with that of previous Popes, because the Council constitutes a deeper exploration of this magisterium within the continuity of the Church's life. In this sense, clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church's social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it. It is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new. It is one thing to draw attention to the particular characteristics of one Encyclical or another, of the teaching of one Pope or another, but quite another to lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpu. Coherence does not mean a closed system: on the contrary, it means dynamic faithfulness to a light received. The Church's social doctrine illuminates with an unchanging light the new problems that are constantly emerging. This safeguards the permanent and historical character of the doctrinal “patrimony” which, with its specific characteristics, is part and parcel of the Church's ever-living Tradition. Social doctrine is built on the foundation handed on by the Apostles to the Fathers of the Church, and then received and further explored by the great Christian doctors. This doctrine points definitively to the New Man, to the “last Adam [who] became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45), the principle of the charity that “never ends” (1 Cor 13:8). It is attested by the saints and by those who gave their lives for Christ our Saviour in the field of justice and peace. It is an expression of the prophetic task of the Supreme Pontiffs to give apostolic guidance to the Church of Christ and to discern the new demands of evangelization. For these reasons, Populorum Progressio, situated within the great current of Tradition, can still speak to us today. (Caritas in veritate, June 29, 2009.)
The master of Hegelian contradiction and positivism, the man who believes that truth is so complex that human language can never express it adequately at any one time, which is why truth can be expressed in different--and seemingly contradictory--ways that actually represent a "continuity" of essence despite an apparent "discontinuity" of linguistic style, would have us believe that Paul VI's Populorum Progressio and the magisterium of the "postconciliar" "popes" do not represent a break with the teaching of the Catholic Church.
How is it, then, that pope after pope, condemned what he, Ratzinger/Benedict, wrote in Caritas in Veritate is a "foundation" of the just social order, "religious liberty"? (See the statements of these true popes in Ratzinger's War Against Catholicism). There is no "continuity" here.
How is it, then, that pope after pope condemned the separation of Church and State that the false "pontiffs" of conciliarism, including Ratzinger/Benedict, endorse wholeheartedly as a "protection" for the role of "religion" in the "public square" in the name of a "healthy secularity"? Pope Saint Pius X called the separation of Church and State as "a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error." Something that is absolutely false in 1906 cannot be made true in 2009 by an antipapal fiat.
There is no "coherence of the overall doctrinal corpu" between the teachings of the true popes and the "magisterium" of the "Second" Vatican Council and its antipopes. There is not one true Successor of Saint Peter prior to the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, who would have endorsed a "world political body" that would violate the Natural Law rights of the sovereignty of individual nations. And though our true popes prior to the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, taught us that the Church would, as a loving mother, make necessary adaptations to the reality of the religiously indifferentist civil state and to make use of the legal frameworks found therein to continue her apostolic mission of teaching and preaching and sanctifying her children, there is not one true pope who ever denied the simple truth that the civil state has a positive obligation founded in the Divine Positive Law revealed by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and explicated by Holy Mother Church consistently over the centuries to recognize her as the true Church and to yield to her magisterial authority when the good of souls demands, after the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, her maternal intervention.
Pope Benedict XV, writing in his first encyclical letter, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, November 1, 1914, added his voice to that of his predecessors in proclaiming the necessity of the civil state's recognizing the true religion as the sole foundation of personal and social order:
Let the Princes and Rulers of peoples remember this truth, and let them consider whether it is a prudent and safe idea for governments or for states to separate themselves from the holy religion of Jesus Christ, from which their authority receives such strength and support. Let them consider again and again, whether it is a measure of political wisdom to seek to divorce the teaching of the Gospel and of the Church from the ruling of a country and from the public education of the young. Sad experience proves that human authority fails where religion is set aside. The fate of our first parent after the Fall is wont to come also upon nations. As in his case, no sooner had his will turned from God than his unchained passions rejected the sway of the will; so, too, when the rulers of nations despise divine authority, in their turn the people are wont to despise their human authority. There remains, of course, the expedient of using force to repress popular risings; but what is the result? Force can repress the body, but it cannot repress the souls of men.
To contend that there is a "continuity" between the consistent, perennial teaching of the Catholic Church and that of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in matters of religious liberty and Church-State relations is to present a lie in the place of the truth. Everyone is bound to accept the teaching enunciated by the true popes without a shadow change, as Pope Pius XI made clear in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:
Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.
There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.
It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14)
Yes, Ratzinger/Benedict's Caritas in Veritate ("Love in Truth") is yet another vehicle for him to use his Modernist presuppositions to deconstruct the meaning of dogmatic truths. There is no "coherence of the overall doctrinal corpu" between the teachings of the true popes and the "magisterium" of the "Second" Vatican Council and its antipopes. None. There is only a bald-faced attempt to assert a "continuity" that does not exist, a "continuity" that cannot be made to exist merely by asserting that it is indeed the case.
Leaving aside Ratzinger/Benedict's continued deconstruction of the true nature of Charity (see the anti-sedevacantist author James Larson's dissection of Ratzinger/Benedict's errors about Charity contained in Deus Caritas Est,
Article 11: A Confusion of Loves) and his not-so-oblique effort to advance the agenda of his late mentor Hans Urs Von Balthasar's lie of "universal salvation when claiming that that "charity in truth" is a "gift received by everyone" (see Caritas in Veritate, Number 34) for another time, mark my words and mark them well: Number 67 of Caritas in Veritate will be seized upon by those intent on promoting the New World Order as a "papal" endorsement of a "world political body" that will be able to take the place of nation-states. And here is a prediction, for whatever it is worth: the putative President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, will thank Ratzinger/Benedict for Caritas in Veritate when the two meet at the Vatican in two days, perhaps even quoting part of the afore-cited passage 67 from its text:
In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for right. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations. (Caritas in veritate, June 29, 2009.)
Ratzinger/Benedict has handed the likes of Caesar Obamus and other statists and those who believe in global governance with quite a gift to advance their evil cause of statism and the eradication of the legitimate sovereignty of individual nation-states. Ratzinger/Benedict's call for the "preservation" of "social security systems" that would have no need to exist if parents welcomed children generously and raised them to accept that they had a duty as a matter of filial piety to support them, the parents, when they became incapable of supporting themselves is in and of itself an irresponsible concession to the existence of the social welfare state that was engineered first by the anti-Catholic Otto von Bismarck and then refined by the lines of Vladimir Lenin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson and Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong, et al.
No matter the elements of Catholicism present in Ratzinger/Benedict's new "encyclical" letter and no matter the parts where he has accurately assessed the consequences of the unbridled free market system and of collectivism, Ratzinger/Benedict's call for a "world political authority" is an open invitation to the statist devils to increase their power over individual citizens in their own countries and by means of agencies of global governance that currently exist. There is no way to protect the Natural Law right of subsidiarity or the Natural Right of parents to educate their children as they see fit once such supreme power is given to men and women who are not only bereft of the Catholic Faith but who hate it with a passion.
Indeed, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI recently called for the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Child by those nations that have not as yet ratified it (see Kindred Spirit of the New World Order) that makes of children what the Supreme Court of the United States of America "mere creatures of the State" in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, June 1, 1925. All of his talk of protecting the innocent preborn and of opposing contraception is just empty rhetoric as he himself has empowered the statists and the globalists time and time again. Caritas in Veritate is an open invitation to those statists and globalists to proceed with alacrity with the final touches on the New World Order that they have been building for quite some time.
Far from the Modernist mind and heart of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is any desire at all to fulfill these words of Pope Saint Pius X, who reminded us, as noted above, that true religion is the only foundation of the just social order:
This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.
No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
Although born on April 19, 1927, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is a child of the 1960s. He believes in the "optimism" of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII and the "Second" Vatican Council and Giovanni Montini/Paul VI about the ability of world organizations to advance "integral human development" according to the precepts of Christian humanism. He believes in the personalist understanding of human "freedom" advanced by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. As noted earlier, the very discontinuity of Caritas in Veritate with the teaching of the Catholic Church is proved by the simple fact only two out of 159 footnotes made any reference at all to a true pope of the Catholic Church. Most of the others, save for two footnote references to Saint Thomas Aquinas and one to Saint Augustine, were references to conciliar sources.
Caritas in Veritate is indeed a clarion call to build that which Pope Saint Pius X condemned in Notre Charge Apostolique:
We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the "Kingdom of God". - "We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind."
And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.
The Catholic Church does not give us encyclical letters full of confusion, full of mixture of truth and error. Pope Pius XI explained in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, that Catholic Church brings forth her teaching to men with ease and security, not with confusion and admixture of truth and error:"
For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)
What is, however, most telling about Ratzinger/Benedict's Caritas in Veritate is his refusal to mention the necessity of praying Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary and for individual Catholics to strive to be faithful to Our Lady's Fatima Message in their daily lives. No mention of the Rosary. No mention of total consecration to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, just a passing reference at the end to Our Lady as the false "pontiff" pleads with her not for our salvation and not for the conversion of men and nations to the true Faith, but for the "development of the whole man and all men."
Development? Our Lady did not use that word when speaking to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin Lucia dos Santos in 1917. She spoke of conversion and reparation, not "development." What complete and utter blasphemy. Our Lady wants the restoration of the Social Reign of her Divine Son, a social reign that Ratzinger/Benedict rejects entirely.
We must always remember that this is the time that God has appointed from all eternity for us to live and thus to sanctify and to save our immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church. The graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, are sufficient for us to handle whatever crosses--personal, social and ecclesiastical--that we are asked to carry. We must give thanks to God at all times for each of our crosses as we seek to serve Him through Our Lady in this time of apostasy and betrayal, making sure to pray our Rosaries of reparation as we give unto the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary the fruits of all of our efforts to restore all things in Him, Christ the King.
Make sure to continue your own participation in Bishop McKenna's Rosary Crusade. May God have mercy on us all!
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.
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.
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.
Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
