Gradually Accepting Naturalism's False Premises

by Thomas A. Droleskey

We live in a world of naturalism, a world that runs counter to what should be the overriding instincts of a well-defined sensus Catholicus that each of us is supposed to have as a result of our Baptism and Confirmation. We permit ourselves to be influenced, if ever so gradually, by this worldly trend or that worldly fashion to such an extent that we are not even aware that we are betraying the Faith as we surrender to the "dictates" of a world that is in the grip of the devil himself.

There are so many examples of how we have been influenced in a gradualistic manner into accepting the false premises of the naturalism of Judeo-Masony, starting, of course, with the exaltation of the utter false and diabolical premises of religious indifferentism and semi-Pelagianism that are at the very foundation of the modern civil state, including the United States of America. Most believing Catholics across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide have permitted themselves to be catechized by the culture of naturalism into which we are steeped--and by which we are most frequently bombarded--and recoil in utter fright when told that their blithe acceptance of one falsehood after another is contrary to the good of their immortal souls. The "world," therefore, becomes the eternal repository of infallible "truths" from which it would be almost unpatriotic to dissent in the slightest. And it is certainly the case that those who attempt to view everything in the world through the eyes of the true Faith and who are not at all willing to "bend" to the "trends of the time" must be just a little crazy, right?

Consider the Virtue of Modesty. How many women and men have permitted themselves to be "catechized" by the world rather than adhering to the immutable standard of Catholic modesty of dress, that we dress to conceal, not to reveal?

Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., wrote the following in The Remnant in 1972:

The avowed enemies of God are rejoicing--temporarily--at having brought about an almost total collapse of the virtue of modesty among once virtuous Christian womanhood, while those commissioned by God to teach and uphold this angelic virtue insist on cowardly silence and indifference about it and on gutless permissiveness in manner of dress everywhere.

Meanwhile, vast numbers of supposedly "good" people remain as if without a conscience, being morally blind and insensitive as to what has really happened to a God-given virtue that was once a distinctive trademark of theirs. This type of blindness seems to go hand in hand with a brazen contempt and a sassy resentfulness towards any attempt to revive and restore the missing sense of modesty.

The fact stands out clearly that the immodest fashions of this unchaste generation still offend Our Lord "very much," as Our Lady foretold it through the angelic little Jacinta.

Anyone who still cares about God's virtue of modesty, which He has made shine with such heavenly beauty in the Immaculate Virgin Mary, cannot forget how Our Lord suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane when He foresaw so many sinners, including the immodest and the impure, remaining unrepentant. And the sight of so many immodest creatures displaying crude flesh, like animals, brings vividly before our mind's eye the frightful vision of Our Divine Savior being mercilessly scourged at the pillar. We need not strain ourselves in trying to picture this scene, for we can plainly see the immodest, with their unchaste displays of flesh and figure, continually scourging Our Lord. And we can see them crowning Him with thorns and nailing Him to the Cross all over again.

And look what sorrow the immodest and the impure are causing their Sorrowful and Immaculate Mother, whom God has presented to them as the Perfect Model of Modesty and Purity!

But it has not all happened by accident. Satan planned it this way. As he has done with such evil movements as Communism and Socialism and Freemasonry, so also has he planned out a program of gradual, not sudden, destruction of the sense of modesty and purity. A mere look at the past 50 years or more shows us very plainly how gradually it was all done, first by apparently innocent abbreviations of garments and by slight revelations of bare flesh and by subtle little displays of the figure, and then, as protests died down, by more and more abbreviations and displays--until the crude immodesty of our day became a shocking reality.

Many living today have seen it all happen before their very eyes. They have lived through it and, if they have managed to retain their God-given moral sense, they find the barbarian immodesty of the this day intolerable and they look upon it as a sin crying to Heaven for the vengeance that must inevitably come if sinners continue to refuse to amend their ways.

Perhaps some 50 years ago or more, a publication known as The Frenchwoman presented the following satanic program for the destruction of the virtue of modesty: "Our children must realize the ideal of nakedness... Thus, the mentality of the child is rapidly transformed. To escape opposition, progress must be methodically graduated: first, feet and legs naked, then upturned sleeves; afterwards, the upper part of the chest; then, the back... n summer, they will go around almost naked."

Even if such a daring statement of the powers of darkness had never come to light--though "enlightened" liberals have tried to keep it in the dark--we would still know that it had to be planned that way and could not have happened by accident. And we would also know that such a program for immodesty could not have originated anywhere but in the dungeons of hell and in the mind of Satan.

The program of gradualism intended to lead eventually to the crude immodesty that we know so painfully well today was evidently drawn up, or at least made known, some time during the Fatima years, possibly a little before or after the 1917 Apparitions of Our Lady. (Maybe some well-informed person can provide a precise date.) Bearing this in mind, we can easily conclude that it was no accident that Our Lady insisted so strongly on modesty in her Fatima Message. She knew well of the evil program that would endanger so many immortal souls, and she came to Fatima to warn souls and to save them from the evil awaiting them.

As Sister Lucy has said, one of the things that Our Lady especially asked for was modesty in dress. And still better known, though disregarded, is Jacinta's prophecy: "Certain fashions will be introduced that will offend Our Lord very much"--that little liked prophecy that leaves immodestly dressed "pious" women and girls callous and insensitive and cold.

Just as Our Lady was commissioned by God to oppose the rise of Russian Communism and all the other evils named in the Fatima Message, with God's own program of sanctification and salvation, so was part of her mission to warn souls of the dangers of immodesty and impurity that were to increase the unbelievable proportions in the years to come, and to turn them to modesty and and purity and amendment of life.

In connection with the timeliness of Our Lady's message of modesty in 1917, just when Satan's program of gradual nakedness was being put into effect, we must also mention the timeliness of the message of modesty of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922). It is fairly well known how dynamic were his two successors, Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, in promoting modesty of dress, but it is not as well known that Pope Benedict XV was before them a strenuous defender and promoter of modesty at a time when we might imagine it was not so much of a problem.

We cannot believe that the statements of Our Lady of Fatima and those of Pope Benedict XV on modesty were disconnected or were merely a matter of coincidence. We can only believe that both Our Lady of Fatima and the Holy Father of that time were inspired and guided by God Himself to speak out on modesty in dress, so as to counteract the wicked program of gradual nudism that was being inspired and guided by hell's father of iniquity.

Let us quote an important statement of Pope Benedict XV--by no means his only one--so that we may see how immodesty in dress had already begun to cause moral ruin among women and girls of his day. In an Encyclical Letter (Sacra Propediem, 1921) commemorationg the 7th centenary of the founding of the Franciscan Third Order, Pope Benedict wrote as follows:

"From this point of view one cannot sufficiently deplore the blindness of so many women of every age and condition; made foolish by desire to please, they do not see to what a degree the in decency of their clothing shocks every honest man, and offends God. Most of them would formerly have blushed for those toilettes as for a grave fault against Christian modesty; now it does not suffice for them to exhibit them on the public thoroughfares; they do not fear to cross the threshold of the churches, to assist at the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, and even to bear the seducing food of shameful passions to the Eucharistic Table where one receives the heavenly Author of purity. And We speak not of those exotic and barbarous dances recently imported into fashionable circles, one more shocking than the other; one cannot imagine anything more suitable for banishing all the remains of modesty."

 

If we did not know that a Pope wrote this in 1921, we would surely think it was written, or should have been written by someone, in 1972!

After thus deploring the immodesty of his day, the Holy Father exhorted women with these words:

"In what concerns specially the Tertiary Sisters, We ask of them by their dress and manner of wearing it, to be models of holy modesty for other ladies and young girls; that they be thoroughly convinced that the best way for them to be of use to the Church and to Society is to labor for the improvement of morals."

 

Whose message, do you suppose, have women and girls accepted: the message of modesty of Our Lady of Fatima and of the Holy Father or, the message of immodesty of Lucifer?

Who has recommend to them short skirts, sleeveless dresses, pants, shorts, and clownish pants suits, and so on?

Not only did women and girls buy and buy and buy the clothing that through the years became gradually shorter and skimpier and tighter and ever more unladylike, thus making the whole program of gradual nakedness a huge success, but something else happened at the same time; the sense of modesty and propriety, which God has instilled into their souls, became gradually more blurred and dim and fuzzy, until in so many it became totally blacked out and dead. They did not, and do not, know what happened to them. By blindly and stupidly following the satanic program of gradual abbreviation of attire, they destroyed in themselves a precious God-given gift--the sense of modesty--so that they have now made themselves incapable of distinguishing between modesty and immodesty, nor do so many of them care to know.

And not only have women destroyed in themselves God's gift of modesty, but they have destroyed it in their children from their earliest years, so that a whole generation has been brought up without any real understanding of modesty without any desire to possess its beauty.

And, mind you, these have been "good" and "pious" women who have done this to their children! They have been the "Lord, Lord" type who have duly said their prayers, which all are obliged to do, but who have not done "the Will of My Father Who is in Heaven" (Mt. 7. 21) by obeying His law of modesty.

 

The gradual acceptance by Catholics of the immodest styles of the world that have been fashioned by the devil to lead souls to ruin in this life and for all eternity in Hell have helped to confuse the roles that are to be played by women in the Order of Nature (the Order of Creation) and in the Order of Grace (the Order of Redemption). There have been few things more insidious than the wearing of masculine attire, principally pants, by women, thus introducing and sustaining mass confusion as to the true femininity of Our Lady herself, who never wore masculine attire that must be exhibited by every woman at all times and in all circumstances. Many women today act and speak the part of men because they dress like men and believe that they must "prove" themselves "as good as men" in all things that men have been ordained to do in the Order of Nature and, sadly, yes, even in the Order of Grace.

Yes, there are exceptions that have been ordained by God Himself (Saint Joan of Arc wore masculine attire to preserve her chastity and to protect the purity of the men whom God had placed under her military command). Fine. God has not ordained the contemporary revolution against the true femininity of Our Lady, the New Eve whose perfect obedience to the will of the Father at Annunciation untied the knot of Eve's prideful disobedience in the Garden of Eden. It is nevertheless the case, as Father Martin Stepanich noted in his 1972 article in The Remnant, that even "pious" ladies believe that the "past is the past" and dress like men themselves and dare to permit their children to dress as men.

This has happened "gradually" over the course of decades as Catholics, who should have known better, were permitted by their pastors, many of whom were afraid to "rock the boat," considered the "world" and its fashions to be infallible and Holy Mother Church to be "out of date" and "out of touch" and even "out of place" to attempt to correct them concerning their desire to adhere to the trends of the world and not to the dictates of Catholic modesty as reiterated in Our Lady's Fatima Message. "No one is going to tell me how to dress!" is the standard response of many a daughter of Eve. Indeed, it is also the response of many a son of Adam who have convinced themselves that the virtue of modesty applies only to women and that they, the men, can go shirtless or expose their legs by the wearing of shorts or baring their muscular arms with sleeveless shirts. Alas, that is the subject for another upcoming article.

The late Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, the longtime Archbishop of Genoa, Italy, wrote the following on the subject of men's dress worn by women:

The first signs of our late arriving spring indicate that there is this year a certain increase in the use of men's dress by girls and women, even family mothers.  Up until 1959, in Genoa, such dress usually meant the person was a tourist, but now it seems to be a significant number of girls and women from Genoa itself who are choosing at least on pleasure trips to wear men's dress (men's trousers).

The extension of this behavior obliges us to take serious thought, and we ask those to whom this Notification is addressed to kindly lend to the problem all the attention it deserves from anyone aware of being in any way responsible before God.

We seek above all to give a balanced moral judgment upon the wearing of men's dress by women. In fact Our thoughts can only bear upon the moral question.

Firstly, when it comes to covering of the female body, the wearing of men's trousers by women cannot be said to constitute AS SUCH A GRAVE OFFENSE AGAINST MODESTY, because trousers certainly cover more of woman's body than do modern women's skirts.

Secondly, however, clothes to be modest need not only to cover the body but also not to cling too closely to the body. Now it is true that much feminine clothing today clings closer than do some trousers, but trousers can be made to cling closer, in fact generally they do, so the tight fit of such clothing gives us not less grounds for concern than does exposure of the body.  So the immodesty of men's trousers on women is an aspect of the problem which is not to be left out of an over-all judgment upon them, even if it is not to be artificially exaggerated either.

II

However, it is a different aspect of women's wearing of men's trousers which seems to us the gravest.

The wearing of men's dress by women affects firstly the woman herself, by changing the feminine psychology proper to women; secondly it affects the woman as wife of her husband, by tending to vitiate relationships between the sexes; thirdly it affects the woman as mother of her children by harming her dignity in her children's eyes.  Each of these points is to be carefully considered in turn:--

A.  MALE DRESS CHANGES THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN.

In truth, the motive impelling women to wear men's dress is always that of imitating, nay, of competing with, the man who is considered stronger, less tied down, more independent.  This motivation shows clearly that male dress is the visible aid to bringing about a mental attitude of being "like a man." Secondly, ever since men have been men, the clothing a person wears, demands, imposes and modifies that person's gestures, attitudes and behavior, such that from merely being worn outside, clothing comes to impose a particular frame of mind inside.

Then let us add that woman wearing man's dress always more or less indicates her reacting to her femininity as though it is inferiority when in fact it is only diversity. The perversion of her psychology is clear to be seen.

These reasons, summing up many more, are enough to warn us how wrongly women are made to think by the wearing of men's dress.

B.  MALE DRESS TENDS TO VITIATE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN.

In truth when relationships between the two sexes unfold with the coming of age, an instinct of mutual attraction is predominant.  The essential basis of this attraction is a diversity between the two sexes which is made possible only by their complementing or completing one another.  If then this "diversity" becomes less obvious because one of its major external signs is eliminated and because the normal psychological structure is weakened, what results is the alteration of a fundamental factor in the relationship.

The problem goes further still.  Mutual attraction between the sexes is preceded both naturally, and in order of time, by that sense of shame which holds the rising instincts in check, imposes respect upon them, and tends to lift to a higher level of mutual esteem and healthy fear everything that those instincts would push onwards to uncontrolled acts.  To change that clothing which by its diversity reveals and upholds nature's limits and defense-works, is to flatten out the distinctions and to help pull down the vital defense-works of the sense of shame.

It is at least to hinder that sense.  And when the sense of shame is hindered from putting on the brakes, then relationships between man and women sink degradingly down to pure sensuality, devoid of all mutual respect or esteem.

Experience is there to tell us that when woman is de-feminised, then defenses are undermined and weakness increases.

C. MALE DRESS HARMS THE DIGNITY OF THE MOTHER IN HER CHILDREN'S EYES.

All children have an instinct for the sense of dignity and decorum of their mother.  Analysis of the first inner crisis of children when they awaken to life around them even before they enter upon adolescence, shows how much the sense of their mother counts.  Children are as sensitive as can be on this point.  Adults have usually left all that behind them and think no more on it.  But we would do well to recall to mind the severe demands that children instinctively make of their own mother, and the deep and even terrible reactions roused in them by observation of their mother's misbehavior.  Many lines of later life are here traced out -- and not for good -- in these early inner dramas of infancy and childhood.

The child may not know the definition of exposure, frivolity or infidelity, but he possesses an instinctive sixth sense to recognize them when they occur, to suffer from them, and be bitterly wounded by them in his soul.

III

Let us think seriously on the import of everything said so far, even if woman's appearing in man's dress does not immediately give rise to all the upset caused by grave immodesty.

The changing of feminine psychology does fundamental and, in the long run, irreparable damage to the family, to conjugal fidelity, to human affections and to human society.  True, the effects of wearing unsuitable dress are not all to be seen within a short time.  But one must think of what is being slowly and insidiously worn down, torn apart, perverted.

Is any satisfying reciprocity between husband and wife imaginable, if feminine psychology be changed?  Or is any true education of children imaginable, which is so delicate in its procedure, so woven of imponderable factors in which the mother's intuition and instinct play the decisive part in those tender years?  What will these women be able to give their children when they will so long have worn trousers that their self-esteem goes more by their competing with the men than by their functioning as women?

Why, we ask, ever since men have been men, or rather since they became civilized -- why have men in all times and places been irresistibly borne to make a differentiated division between the functions of the two sexes?  Do we not have here strict testimony to the recognition by all mankind of a truth and a law above man?

To sum up, wherever women wear men's dress, it is to be considered a factor in the long run tearing apart human order.

IV

The logical consequence of everything presented so far is that anyone in a position of responsibility should be possessed by a SENSE of ALARM in the true and proper meaning of the word, a severe and decisive ALARM.

We address a grave warning to parish priests, to all priests in general and to confessors in particular, to members of every kind of association, to all religious, to all nuns, especially to teaching Sisters.

We invite them to become clearly conscious of the problem so that action will follow.  This consciousness is what matters.  It will suggest the appropriate action in due time.  But let it not counsel us to give way in the face of inevitable change, as though we are confronted by a natural evolution of mankind, and so on!

Men may come and men may go, because God has left plenty of room for the to and fro of their free-will; but the substantial lines of nature and the not less substantial lines of Eternal Law have never changed, are not changing and never will change.  There are bounds beyond which one may stray as far as one sees fit, but to do so ends in death; there are limits which empty philosophical fantasizing may have one mock or not take seriously, but they put together an alliance of hard facts and nature to chastise anybody who steps over them.  And history has sufficiently taught, with frightening proof from the life and death of nations, that the reply to all violators of the outline of "humanity" is always, sooner or later, catastrophe.

From the dialectic of Hegel onwards, we have had dinned in our ears what are nothing but fables, and by dint of hearing them so often, many people end up by getting used to them, if only passively.  But the truth of the matter is that Nature and Truth, and the Law bound up in both, go their imperturbable way, and they cut to pieces the simpletons who upon no grounds whatsoever believe in radical and far-reaching changes in the very structure of man.

The consequences of such violations are not a new outline of man, but disorders, hurtful instability of all kinds, the frightening dryness of human souls, the shattering increase in the number of human castaways, driven long since out of people's sight and mind to live out their decline in boredom, sadness and rejection.  Aligned on the wrecking of the eternal norms are to be found the broken families, lives cut short before their time, hearths and homes gone cold, old people cast to one side, youngsters willfully degenerate and -- at the end of the line -- souls in despair and taking their own lives.  All of which human wreckage gives witness to the fact that the "line of God" does not give way, nor does it admit of any adaption to the delirious dreams of the so-called philosophers!

V

We have said that those to whom the present Notification is addressed are invited to take serious alarm at the problem in hand.  Accordingly they know what they have to say, starting with little girls on their mother's knee.

They know that without exaggerating or turning into fanatics, they will need to strictly limit how far they tolerate women dressing like men, as a general rule.

They know they must never be so weak as to let anyone believe that they turn a blind eye to a custom which is slipping downhill and undermining the moral standing of all institutions.

They, the priests, know that the line they have to take in the confessional, while not holding women dressing like men to be automatically a grave fault, must be sharp and decisive.

Everybody will kindly give thought to the need for a united line of action, reinforced on every side by the cooperation of all men of good will and all enlightened minds, so as to create a true dam to hold back the flood.

Those of you responsible for souls in whatever capacity understand how useful it is to have for allies in this defensive campaign men of the arts, the media and the crafts.  The position taken by fashion design houses, their brilliant designers and the clothing industry, is of crucial importance in this whole question.  Artistic sense, refinement and good taste meeting together can find suitable but dignified solution as to the dress for women to wear when they must use a motorcycle or engage in this or that exercise or work.  What matters is to preserve modesty together with the eternal sense of femininity, that femininity which more than anything else all children will continue to associate with the face of their mother.

We do not deny that modern life sets problems and makes requirements unknown to our grandparents.  But we state that there are values more needing to be protected than fleeting experiences, and that for anybody of intelligence there are always good sense and good taste enough to find acceptable and dignified solutions to problems as they come up.

Out of charity we are fighting against the flattening out of mankind, against the attack upon those differences on which rests the complementarity of man and woman.

When we see a woman in trousers, we should think not so much of her as of all mankind, of what it will be when women will have masculinized themselves for good.  Nobody stands to gain by helping to bring about a future age of vagueness, ambiguity, imperfection and, in a word, monstrosities.

This letter of Ours is not addressed to the public, but to those responsible for souls, for education, for Catholic associations.  Let them do their duty, and let them not be sentries caught asleep at their post while evil crept in. Men's Dress Worn By Women

 

Cardinal Siri's letter to his clergy forty-eight years ago is a perfect summary of the problems that have been wrought by the lies of the devil, especially by the triumph of naturalism as the basis of the modern civil state and by the French and Bolshevik revolutions' violent effort to impose their false notions of "egalitarianism" as the basis of relations between men and women and thus as the basis for the whole of social order (marital, political, economic). The true sense of femininity referred to by Cardinal Siri and exemplified by the very Mother of God has been replaced by the pride of feminism, which is nothing other than a return to the "non serviam est" spoken by Eve to God when she disobeyed Him in the effort to make herself His equal by eating of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The French Revolution proclaimed the "liberation" of women from the "shackles" of the past. The Bolshevik Revolution did the same, helping to pave the way for the "Roaring Twenties" in the West as Talmudic sympathizers of the Bolshevik Revolution produced motion pictures and magazines designed to undermine modesty and introduce Bolshevik standards as the basis of undermining the role of men in society and to take women out of the home so that their children will be trained from infancy through young adulthood by the agents of all forms of naturalism (Judeo-Masonic and Bolshevik in particular). Contemporary feminism is but an outgrowth of the devil's efforts to replace Our Lady as the model of femininity with that of the "Eve" of modernity, fully liberated from "man" and from God Himself.

Pope Pius XI explained this in Divini Redemptoris, his encyclical letter on atheistic communism issued on March 19, 1937, two days after he issued his encyclical letter, Mit Brennender Sorge, condemning Nazi nationalism and racialism:

Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.  (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

 

Forcing women out of the family and into the sweatshops and the factories was a goal of not only the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, but also of the Industrial Revolution of Calvinist capitalism. Wives and mothers whose husbands worked long hours in factories for substandard wages were forced in many instances to go to work themselves in order to supplement their husbands' meager incomes. This is what prompted Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI to insist that the man, the principal breadwinner of the family, to be paid a "living wage," that is, to be paid enough to support their families without forcing their wives to abandon the home and to enter unnecessarily into the work force. The living wage is not a flat sum of money. Indeed, Holy Mother Church teaches that a just employer will pay his employees a sum proportionate to the work that they do and proportionate to the number of children with which he has been blessed by God.

Pope Pius XI, reviewing and elaborating upon the principles outlined by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, summarized Catholic teaching on this matter in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931:

The just amount of pay, however, must be calculated not on a single basis but on several, as Leo XIII already wisely declared in these words: "To establish a rule of pay in accord with justice, many factors must be taken into account."

By this statement he plainly condemned the shallowness of those who think that this most difficult matter is easily solved by the application of a single rule or measure -- and one quite false.

For they are greatly in error who do not hesitate to spread the principle that labor is worth and must be paid as much as its products are worth, and that consequently the one who hires out his labor has the right to demand all that is produced through his labor. How far this is from the truth is evident from that We have already explained in treating of property and labor.

It is obvious that, as in the case of ownership, so in the case of work, especially work hired out to others, there is a social aspect also to be considered in addition to the personal or individual aspect. For man's productive effort cannot yield its fruits unless a truly social and organic body exists, unless a social and juridical order watches over the exercise of work, unless the various occupations, being interdependent, cooperate with and mutually complete one another, and, what is still more important, unless mind, material things, and work combine and form as it were a single whole. Therefore, where the social and individual nature of work is neglected, it will be impossible to evaluate work justly and pay it according to justice.

Conclusions of the greatest importance follow from this twofold character which nature has impressed on human work, and it is in accordance with these that wages ought to be regulated and established.

In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family. That the rest of the family should also contribute to the common support, according to the capacity of each, is certainly right, as can be observed especially in the families of farmers, but also in the families of many craftsmen and small shopkeepers. But to abuse the years of childhood and the limited strength of women is grossly wrong. Mothers, concentrating on household duties, should work primarily in the home or in its immediate vicinity. It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father's low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children. Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs adequately. But if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, social justice demands that changes be introduced as soon as possible whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman. It will not be out of place here to render merited praise to all, who with a wise and useful purpose, have tried and tested various ways of adjusting the pay for work to family burdens in such a way that, as these increase, the former may be raised and indeed, if the contingency arises, there may be enough to meet extraordinary needs.

In determining the amount of the wage, the condition of a business and of the one carrying it on must also be taken into account; for it would be unjust to demand excessive wages which a business cannot stand without its ruin and consequent calamity to the workers. If, however, a business makes too little money, because of lack of energy or lack of initiative or because of indifference to technical and economic progress, that must not be regarded a just reason for reducing the compensation of the workers. But if the business in question is not making enough money to pay the workers an equitable wage because it is being crushed by unjust burdens or forced to sell its product at less than a just price, those who are thus the cause of the injury are guilty of grave wrong, for they deprive workers of their just wage and force them under the pinch of necessity to accept a wage less than fair.

Let, then, both workers and employers strive with united strength and counsel to overcome the difficulties and obstacles and let a wise provision on the part of public authority aid them in so salutary a work. If, however, matters come to an extreme crisis, it must be finally considered whether the business can continue or the workers are to be cared for in some other way. In such a situation, certainly most serious, a feeling of close relationship and a Christian concord of minds ought to prevail and function effectively among employers and workers.

Lastly, the amount of the pay must be adjusted to the public economic good. We have shown above how much it helps the common good for workers and other employees, by setting aside some part of their income which remains after necessary expenditures, to attain gradually to the possession of a moderate amount of wealth. But another point, scarcely less important, and especially vital in our times, must not be overlooked: namely, that the opportunity to work be provided to those who are able and willing to work. This opportunity depends largely on the wage and salary rate, which can help as long as it is kept within proper limits, but which on the other hand can be an obstacle if it exceeds these limits. For everyone knows that an excessive lowering of wages, or their increase beyond due measure, causes unemployment. This evil, indeed, especially as we see it prolonged and injuring so many during the years of Our Pontificate, has plunged workers into misery and temptations, ruined the prosperity of nations, and put in jeopardy the public order, peace, and tranquillity of the whole world. Hence it is contrary to social justice when, for the sake of personal gain and without regard for the common good, wages and salaries are excessively lowered or raised; and this same social justice demands that wages and salaries be so managed, through agreement of plans and wills, in so far as can be done, as to offer to the greatest possible number the opportunity of getting work and obtaining suitable means of livelihood.

 

It is indeed a grave injustice to force wives and mothers into the work force when there place is in the home to help to train their children to be canonizable saints.

Feminism goes beyond the Industrial Revolution's coercion of "market forces" to place wives and mothers into the work force as a result of substandard wages and/or part-time employment offered to husbands and fathers. Feminism considers it a necessity for women to enter the work force so as to "fulfill" themselves and to compete with men (as they dress, act and speak like men) for jobs and promotions in the factory, in the corporate boardroom, in the courtroom, in hospitals, and in politics, among other places. This has made it more difficult for men to obtain and retain good paying positions, thereby forcing wives and mothers who want to stay at home into the work force.

Feminism has also convinced women that it is a "virtue" to postpone childbearing in order to fulfill their career desires and/or to place newborn children into daycare programs soon after birth so that they can return to the work place and "fulfill" themselves while others care for their children. Feminism, which is exalted in almost every elementary and secondary school in the United States of America, including most, although not all, of the schools under the control of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, brainwashes young girls from their tenderest years that they must have "careers" in the world. Oh, if they "choose" to be wives and mother, that's all well and good. However, the "career" must come first in order for them to fulfill themselves (and/or have the "extra money" to buy loads and loads and loads of material things or to have "second" house" or a luxury boat or take exotic vacations) and to break the various "barriers" of the "glass ceiling."

Thus it is that men have begun in the past forty years or so to treat their daughters as boys, dressing them as boys, expecting them to do engage in masculine activities in order to "prepare" them for that "real" world of which we hear so very much from those who are steeped in the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry even though they might consider themselves to be, of all people, "traditional" Catholics. It thus becomes very natural even for well-meaning women of the "conservative" bent of naturalism to believe that they are do everything that men do, including running for elected office when they have young children at home. Why give this even a "second" thought? Hasn't the world "changed" in the past four decades.

Well, the "world" may have changed. The truths of the Order of Creation (Nature) and the Order of Redemption (Grace) have not changed. Women are to dress as women at all times (exceptions such as those of Saint Joan of Arc having been noted earlier). Wives and mothers are supposed to stay at home with their children until they, the children, embark upon their own particular vocation, acknowledging full well the fact that there are women with young children who are forced to work because of their husbands' meager salaries or because they have been abandoned by their husbands or because of the death of their husbands. This is no diminution of women or a disparagement of their intellectual abilities. This is no "enslavement" of women to their husbands and their children. This is but a simple truth of the Order of Creation and the Order of Redemption that no one is free to ignore without peril to the right ordering of society itself.

Ah, behold the wreckage of a society where the naturalist ideology of feminism prevails even to a large extent in the minds of believing Catholics, including traditionally-minded Catholics across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide. This wreckage is such that "pro-life" Catholics (can a Catholic be anything other than pro-life and yet be a member of the Catholic Church in good standing) do not bat an eyelash when the mother of a four month old baby boy is selected to run for Vice President of the United States of America. The desire to defeat the hideous long-time disciple of the Communist Frank Marshall Davis and the egregious "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright, United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-Illinois), trumps what should be a Catholic's supernatural sense of recoiling in horror at the thought of a mother with a young son, no less one with Down's Syndrome, serving in one public office while running for the second highest office in the United States of America. Have we lost our Catholic minds, ladies and gentlemen?

Pope Pius XII issued a set of Papal Directive for Women of Today on September 11, 1947 in which he addressed this exact issue:

There remains to be considered the domain of political life. In many circumstances, We have already touched upon it. This domain has several distinct aspects: the safeguard and care of the sacred interests of woman, by means of legislation and administration that respects her rights, dignity, and social function -- the participation of some women in political life for the good, the welfare, and the progress of all.

Your own role is, in general, to work toward making woman always more conscious of her sacred rights, of her duties, and of her power to help mold public opinion, through her daily contacts, and to influence legislation and administration by the proper use of her prerogatives as citizen. Such is your common role. It does not mean that you are all to have political careers as members of public assemblies. Most of you must continue to give the greater part of your time and of your loving attention to the care of your homes and families. We must not forget that the making of a home in which all feel at ease and happy, and the bringing up of children are very special contributions to the common welfare. So we rejoice in the fact, which you yourselves rightly recorded, that among rural families, which are still such a large part of society, woman's work in the home still goes hand in hand with her contribution to the social and national economy.

Those among you who have more leisure and are suitably prepared, will take up the burden of public life and be, as it were, your delegated representatives. Give them your confidence, understand their difficulties, the hard work and sacrifices their devotion entails; give them your help and support.

 

Lest those naturalists of the "conservative" bent protest that they can ignore such a papal allocution, which is merely a reiteration of the basic precepts of the Order of Creation and the Order of Redemption concerning the roles befitting the dignity and true femininity of wives and mothers, perhaps its is prudent to explain that Pope Pius XII preempted such a protest in the same set of directives quoted immediately above:

But under the pretense of saving the Church from the risk of being led astray in the "temporal" sphere, a slogan launched some ten years ago, continues to gain acceptance: return to the purely "spiritual." And by that is understood that the Church should confine her activities to a purely dogmatic teaching, to the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, the administration of the sacraments, and that all incursion into, or even the right of examination in the domain of public life, all intervention in the civil or social order, should be denied her. As if dogma did not have a bearing upon every aspect of human life, as if the mysteries of the faith with their supernatural wealth, were not to maintain and invigorate the lives of individuals and, as a logical consequence, to harmonize public life with the law of God, to impregnate it with the spirit of Christ! Such vivisection is nothing short of being anti-Catholic.

 

Any questions out there in cyberspace among those of you may have lost your Catholic minds in a burst of enthusiasm to embrace the candidacy of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as United States Senator John Sidney McCain III's Vice Presidential running mate? Any questions?

Some will protest further that Sarah Palin, a fallen away Catholic, mind you, who left the true Faith at the age of twelve to become a member of the Catholic-hating group of Pentecostalists known as the Assemblies of God, is completely pro-life and that she was in the [Patrick Joseph] Buchanan Brigades back in 1996 and actually voted for Mr. Buchanan when he was the Presidential nominee of the Reform Party in the year 2000. So what? None of that exculpates her from fulfilling her role as wife and mother. The world is shaped--or misshaped--by mothers as they train (or refuse to train) their children in the truths of the true Faith. While Mrs. Palin is certainly well-intentioned and has taken positions on the inviolability of innocent human life that are more Catholic than those taken by her Catholic opponent, United States Senator Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.. (D-Delaware), she is nevertheless bounden to be home with her children, not to assume the duties of public life, no less that of the Vice Presidency of the United States of America.

While it is the case today, as noted above, that many women who want to be at home with their children are forced into the work place as a matter of fundamental necessity, wives and mothers are not to seek electively to enter into the work force in ways that separate them for most of the hours of a day from their children. Do we want our daughters to think that Sarah Palin, a fallen away Catholic who dresses in "power" pants suits, is their model and not Our Lady, whose Fatima Message of modesty is most likely unknown to the adherent of the Assemblies of God, Mrs. Palin? Do we want our daughters to think that it is right and just to seek to have a political career as they are bearing children and have the responsibilities of caring for newborns? Do we want our daughters to think that our political system, based as it is on the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles of Modernity, requires us to subordinate the truths of the Holy Faith in order to make "progress" in the midst of the world?

What about Mrs. Palin being completely pro-life? Doesn't that count for anything? Well, what does it mean to be "pro-life" as one leaves her children for hours on end to engage in a purely elective activity? What does it mean to be "pro-life" when you have personally chosen to abandon the true Church in whose maternal bosom is alone to be found the safe harbor that leads to eternal life in the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity? Oh, well, what's the big deal about leaving the true Church to become a member of the Assemblies of God or a Mormon or anything else? Aren't we more enlightened in this age of "ecumenism"? Isn't it the "conservative cause" that matters more than anything else?

No. It is the Catholic alone to which we must be committed. None other.

Furthermore, my friends, we have to remember that the taking of innocent human life in the womb, whether by chemical or surgical means, is the result of the systematic and planned overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the devil himself by means of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry and all of the naturalistic "philosophies" and ideologies that have been spawned thereby. There is no short-term, naturalistic, legal, constitutional or electoral way by which this crime, one of the four that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, is going to retarded, and it is not going to be retarded on the basis of naturalistic presuppositions of American "civil liberty" or "constitutionalism" or "conservatism" or "libertarianism."

The devil has used abortion in many insidious ways. He has raised up naturalists who are so completely supportive of the daily slaughter of the preborn under cover of law that anyone looks better by comparison. He has so stymied all naturalistic efforts to stem this contemporary genocide of the preborn that many people who are in the "pro-life" trenches are willing to accept any signs, no matter how illusory, that "progress" is being made, which is what many have done by suspending rationality in the belief that the administration of President George Walker Bush has been "pro-life" when the truth of the matter is otherwise (as will be demonstrated once again in an upcoming article). 

This diabolical trap has been such that many Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism become breathless when a conciliar "bishop" goes to an abortuary to lead a recitation of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary. Never mind the fact that this same conciliar "bishop" subjects children to the harm of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. Never mind the fact that this same conciliar "bishop" offends God daily by offering the abomination that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. Never mind the fact that this same conciliar "bishop" believes in the new ecclesiology and false ecumenism and religious liberty and separation of Church and State. Never mind all of that. It is "enough" that the conciliar "bishop" is opposed to surgical abortion. That's all that matters to so many "pro-life" Catholics.

It is this same diabolical trap into which so many are falling at present with John Sidney McCain III's selection of Sarah Palin. While she is certainly well-intentioned and appears to have many natural gifts, her place is at home with her husband and her children. It is not in the governor's mansion in Alaska. It is not running for the Vice Presidency of the United States of America. The "world" may change, my friends. What was good enough for the Mother of God herself, to be a stay-at-home Mother, is good enough for all mothers at all times, admitting, as noted above that there are exceptions caused by circumstances out of the control of women who desire to stay at home but are forced to enter the work world in some form or another.

Although many will aghast at the thought about to be expressed, it is nevertheless true that Sarah Palin's ascent to prominence will do more harm to the souls of Catholic daughters than can be imagined. Our Catholic daughters may be "inspired" (and inspiration can come from below as well as from above) to abandon any consideration of a vocation to the consecrated religious life in order to follow the groundbreaking footsteps of a "conservative" feminist, Sarah Palin, who is so shaped by the ethos of Americanism that she has chosen completely pagan names for her children (Track, Trig, Willow, Piper, Bristol). Some may be "inspired" to leave the true Faith.

Please, my friends, do not permit yourselves to surrender your sensus Catholicus for the sensus insanus. We must never encourage the electoral careers of mothers with small children, and we must in no way encourage or enable anyone who has left the true Faith and who have voluntarily surrendered their souls to the devil by means of choosing to immerse themselves in a false religion, We must recognize that each false religion is loathed by God and that we do no service to Him or to the soul of an apostate to lionize the apostate for any reason whatsoever.

I mean, isn't it a little disingenuous for anyone who has the good of his nation truly at heart to praise former United States Representatives Geraldine Ferraro D-New York, and United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, for being "groundbreaking" advocates of women? Geraldine Ferraro was groundbreaking only in her shrill championing of the "right" of Catholics to dissent from the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment's prohibition against the direct, intentional killing of innocent preborn human beings. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who started her professional career by attempting to deny then President Richard Milhous Nixon with the right to legal representation during the impeachment process when she served as an aide to the pro-abortion Catholic Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, the late Representative Peter Rodino, D-New Jersey (see They Never Take Prisoners), chose to "make" her career by attaching her wagon to William Jefferson Blythe Clinton's star, serving as his enabler as he abused one woman after another, women whom Mrs. Clinton herself trashed in public when they came forth with stories that she, Mrs. Clinton, knew full well to be true. Praise Hillary Clinton? For what? For what?

Again, some will protest that this is just "politics," that Mrs. Palin is only acknowledging Senator Clinton's "courage" in wading into a man's world. Just politics? Are you serious? Are you really serious? No one who is a Catholic is permitted to think that gratuitous praise offered to an arch-feminist by a "feminist for life" is something that is "just politics." Hillary Rodham Clinton has been in the forefront of promoting the legal "right" of women to "choose" to kill their preborn children. Although we must pray for the conversion of Mrs. Clinton and her husband to the true Faith, we do not offer "praise" to either one of them as to do so is to convince people that their participation in public life has been anything other than tools used by the devil to advance his agenda of naturalism and the statism that flows there from. Words matter, my friends. Words matter. We must speak only the truth. It is not an exercise of truth to "praise" Hillary Rodham Clinton for anything.

Indeed, must we be reminded that Hillary Rodham Clinton herself chose quite electively to continue her career, disparaging traditional stay-at-home mothers as follows back in 1992 as her husband, then the Governor of the State of Arkansas, was seeking the presidential nomination of the Democrat Party?

HILLARY CLINTON: I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life. Frontline: The Clinton Years: Nightline Transcript: Making Hillary Clinton An Issue,

 

Praise Hillary Clinton? Puhhhhhhhlease.

While we must pray for the return of Mrs. Sarah Heath Palin to the true Faith that she has abandoned for the falsehoods of the Pentecostalism of the Assemblies of God, we must not see her selection as John Sidney McCain III's running mate as anything other than yet another expression of the triumph of the diabolical Americanist and conciliarist spirit of religious indifferentism as the foundation of personal and social order. No one who has abandoned the true Faith can do anything other than add to social disorder, which Mrs. Palin does merely by dressing as a man and choosing quite electively to place herself as a figure in public life when the duties of her state-in-life demand her to be at home with her husband and her children.

Mind you, stating the objective truth of how harmful it is to enable the career of one who is steeped in various falsehoods of Americanism and Protestantism is meant in no way to cast aspersions upon Mrs. Palin's intentions or upon the subjective state of her immortal soul, which is known to God alone. Sarah Heath Palin's life story is similar to that of so many other baptized Catholics in the United States of America who left the Faith--either of their own volition or because their parents chose to do so--as this land of "religious liberty" considers pluralism to be a virtue, not a hindrance to the good of souls and thus to the good of social order.

To recall the words of Saint Augustine, quoted by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error." The United States of America, built on one naturalistic error after another, is a land that celebrates the "freedom of error," and Sarah Palin and her family have been convinced that this "freedom of error," masquerading as "virtue" under the slogan of "religious liberty" that has been embraced with gusto by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, is something good rather than a trap from the devil to convince people that the true Faith is not the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

Once again, good readers, let us remember the words of Pope Saint Pius X, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

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.)

 

Want to get all excited about Sarah Palin? You've got free will. Do and believe as you want. For my part, however, I, a weak vessel of clay who is no better than anyone and far worse than most others, will continue to point out the inconvenient truths of Catholicism and to remind my readers that we cannot accept the false premises of naturalism, that we must pray and work for the Social Reign of Christ the King as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life will permit, as we offer all of our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices and humiliations and penances and mortifications to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

 

Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the after of our death.

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Raymond Nonnatus, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

The Novena to Maria Bambina

(begins today, August 30, 2008, and runs through September 7, 2008)

Mari Bambina--Infant Queen of the universe, intercede for all of us who have recourse to thee!  Do not forget us, thy faithful but lowly subjects who await thy response to our constant prayers !  We long to kneel before thy crib and watch thee sleep, dear little Queen! Choose to look upon us with thy loving childlike gaze and through that gaze send graces to us so that we may rejoice with thee and praise that beautiful day that God chose from all of eternity to begin the Redemption through thy most glorious Immaculate Conception!  Amen.