Hope Against Hope in But Mere Mortals and Their Naturalist Dreams
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Many a career politician declared "dead on arrival" after some stunning defeat have come back from the dead, proving themselves to be political Lazaruses of the first order. It is sometimes the case that politicians declare their own careers over before staging "dramatic" comebacks, explaining later that they maintained "hope" in themselves and in the American "dream" of rising to the penultimate position of political power in the United States of America: the Presidency.
Former Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon appeared politically "dead" after he delivered these remarks at his "last press conference" on Wednesday, November 7, 1962:
For 16 years, ever since the [Alger] Hiss case, you've had a lot of—a lot of fun—that you've had an opportunity to attack me and I think I've given as good as I've taken.....But as I leave you I want you to know—just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. (Richard Nixon's not-so-last press conference, November 7, 1962.)
Richard Milhous Nixon lost only two elections in his long career of public service: the first being his presidential run against then Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960, an election that was most likely stolen from him. The second was his ill-considered race against then California Governor G. Edmund "Pat" Brown (the father of future California Governor G. Edmund "Jerry" Brown) in 1962. Nixon won two races for the United States House of Representatives, 1946 and 1948, and for the United States Senate in 1950 before winning as Dwight David Eisenhower's Vice Presidential running mate in 1952 and 1956, and then his two elections to the Presidency of United States of America in 1968 and 1972.
Nixon hated losing. Hated it. Driven to succeed throughout his entire life, the low point of his life occurred on August 8, 1974, when he addressed the nation from the Oval Office of the White House (preempting Ironside as he had done four years before on that date when he gave his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida) to announce his resignation as President of the United States of America that would be effective at noon on the following day, Friday, August 9, 1974.
Nixon explained how much it grated against him to have to quit the Presidency:
I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.
Richard Nixon, of course, tried to re-establish his tarnished reputation in the next nineteen years, nine months before his death on April 22, 1994. A political comeback was impossible. He did, however, work hard as one who believed in self-redemption to restore something of his reputation in the final two decades of his life as an elder statesman. Although an absolute naturalist to the very core of his being, a man who got the United States of America involved in the dirty, immoral business of funding the chemical assassinations of millions of children around the world by means of international "family planning" programs (and who came very close to issuing an National Security Study Memorandum in 1974 that would have committed the government of the United States of American to adopting a "global" policy that would limit married couples to having only two children), Nixon was a man who studied history and could speak extemporaneously without notes, as he did at the age of eighty-one on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first presidential inauguration, an event that took place at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
Richard Nixon believed that he lived the American "dream," rising from near-poverty in his childhood in Whittier and Yorba Linda, California, to rise to the heights of political power in the United States of America. This is the way he put it in his August 8, 1968, acceptance address at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida:
But this is only part of what I see in America.
I see another child tonight.
He hears the train go by at night and he dreams of far away places where he'd like to go.
It seems like an impossible dream.
But he is helped on his journey through life.
A father who had to go to work before he finished the sixth grade, sacrificed everything he had so that his sons could go to college.
A gentle, Quaker mother, with a passionate concern for peace, quietly wept when he went to war but she understood why he had to go.
A great teacher, a remarkable football coach, an inspirational minister encouraged him on his way.
A courageous wife and loyal children stood by him in victory and also defeat.
And in his chosen profession of politics, first there were scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and finally millions worked for his success.
And tonight he stands before you -- nominated for President of the United States of America. Richard Nixon's 1968 Acceptance Speech
Ah, yes, the American "dream," a "dream" built on the desire to "succeed" in the midst of the world, to rise from poverty to wealth, from anonymity to fame, from powerlessness to power. A country founded on a whole variety of false premises (the anti-Incarnational and religiously indifferentist premises of Judeo-Masonry, the materialism of Calvinism, the semi-Pelagian premises of the "Enlightenment," leading men to believe that they are more or less "self-redemptive," that men do not need Sanctifying Grace to be virtuous) leaves little room for the pursuit of man's Last End as the all-defining purpose for which he has been created. What matters most is to "succeed" in this world and to spread "American values" as the foundation of "hope" for the rest of the world.
Nixon himself noted this in his 1960 acceptance speech delivered at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, at the height of the Cold War on July 28, 1960:
My fellow Americans, I know tonight that we must resist the hate; we must remove the doubts, but above all, we must be worthy of the love and the trust of millions on this earth for whom America is the hope of the world.
A hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln was asked during the dark days of the tragic War between the States whether he thought God was on his side. His answer was, "My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side."
My fellow Americans, may that ever be our prayer for our country, and in that spirit, with faith in America, with faith in her ideals and in her people, I accept your nomination for President of the United States. Richard Nixon's 1960 Acceptance Speech
Overlooking the fact that Abraham Lincoln was an atheist who only started to make references to God for purely pragmatic purposes of political self-interest when he was running for President of the United States of America in 1860 (to wit, Lincoln wrote to a Judge James Nelson that his, Lincoln's "thanksgiving message" was "some of" Secretary of State William "Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools"), Nixon's view of the United States of America as the "hope of the world" (echoed, of course in Ronald Reagan's strains of "last best hope of man on earth," itself borrowed from the imagery of Puritan preachers of Seventeenth Century New England) is a constant theme of Americanism and of its "mission" to "save" the world. Although the naturalists of the false opposites of the "right" and the "left" disagree some on the details as to how this "mission" is be exercised, they both believe that such a "mission" exists and that it gives "hope" to others in the world.
Consider the closing of then President Richard Nixon's "Vietnamization" speech of November 3, 1969:
Fifty years ago, in this room and at this very desk, President Woodrow Wilson spoke words which caught the imagination of a war-weary world. He said: "This is the war to end war." His dream for peace after World War I was shattered on the hard realities of great power politics and Woodrow Wilson died a broken man. Tonight I do not tell you that the war in Vietnam is the war to end wars. But I do say this: I have initiated a plan which will end this war in a way that will bring us closer to that great goal to which Woodrow Wilson and every American President in our history has been dedicated - the goal of a just and lasting peace. Richard Nixon Vietnamization Speech (November 3, 1969)
Naturalism contends, of course, that man can know order in his soul and in his nation, as well as "peace" in the world-at-large, without submitting himself to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and without having resource to the Sanctifying Grace He won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of His 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. Man is self-redemptive, you see, and must draw his "hope" from his belief in himself and his own abilities, seeking improvement in the world by means of electoral politics and public policy.
As we know, President George Walker Bush has talked incessantly about the "mission" of the United States of America to restore "hope" by means of the demigod of American "democracy" to the rest of the world, currently rattling sabers over an alleged incident wherein Iranian speedboats engaged in "provocative" actions as the pretext to expanding the "global war on terror" into Iran. Consider this excerpt from a speech Bush delivered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on June 28, 2005:
America and our friends are in a conflict that demands much of us. It demands the courage of our fighting men and women, it demands the steadfastness of our allies, and it demands the perseverance of our citizens. We accept these burdens, because we know what is at stake. We fight today because Iraq now carries the hope of freedom in a vital region of the world, and the rise of democracy will be the ultimate triumph over radicalism and terror. And we fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we'll fight them there, we'll fight them across the world, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won.
America has done difficult work before. From our desperate fight for independence to the darkest days of a Civil War, to the hard-fought battles against tyranny in the 20th century, there were many chances to lose our heart, our nerve, or our way. But Americans have always held firm, because we have always believed in certain truths. We know that if evil is not confronted, it gains in strength and audacity, and returns to strike us again. We know that when the work is hard, the proper response is not retreat, it is courage. And we know that this great ideal of human freedom entrusted to us in a special way, and that the ideal of liberty is worth defending. President Addresses Nation, Discusses Iraq, War on Terror
Ah, yes, the American "ideal of liberty," which includes, of course, contraception and many other features of popular culture that have corrupted the United States of America and so many other countries in the world.
The American concept of "civil liberty," including "freedom of speech" and "freedom of press" and "freedom of religion" has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church. Consider this excerpt from Pope Leo XIII's Libertas, June 20, 1888:
We must now consider briefly liberty of speech, and liberty of the press. It is hardly necessary to say that there can be no such right as this, if it be not used in moderation, and if it pass beyond the bounds and end of all true liberty. For right is a moral power which -- as We have before said and must again and again repeat -- it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State. The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions. If unbridled license of speech and of writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint. In regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man's free discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often to discover it and make it known.
A like judgment must be passed upon what is called liberty of teaching. There can be no doubt that truth alone should imbue the minds of men, for in it are found the well-being, the end, and the perfection of every intelligent nature; and therefore nothing but truth should be taught both to the ignorant and to the educated, so as to bring knowledge to those who have it not, and to preserve it in those who possess it. For this reason it is plainly the duty of all who teach to banish error from the mind, and by sure safeguards to close the entry to all false convictions. From this it follows, as is evident, that the liberty of which We have been speaking is greatly opposed to reason, and tends absolutely to pervert men's minds, in as much as it claims for itself the right of teaching whatever it pleases -- a liberty which the State cannot grant without failing in its duty. And the more so because the authority of teachers has great weight with their hearers, who can rarely decide for themselves as to the truth or falsehood of the instruction given to them.
I will return to the theme of this particular passage of Libertas, which is almost identical to passages in Pope Gregory XVI's Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, in another article in the next day or so.
Possessing "hope" in the American "dream" cuts across political party and ideological lines. Remember Jesse Jackson's "Keep Hope Alive!" speech at the Democrat Party National Convention on July 19, 1988, in Atlanta, Georgia:
I was born in the slum, but the slum was not born in me. And it wasn't born in you, and you can make it.
Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high; stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don't you surrender!
Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end faith will not disappoint.
You must not surrender! You may or may not get there but just know that you're qualified! And you hold on, and hold out! We must never surrender!! America will get better and better.
Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive! On tomorrow night and beyond, keep hope alive!
I love you very much. I love you very much.
Faith in what? Suffering is useless if it is not offered up in union with the Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, especially by means of total consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Faith in what? Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, who has broken his Catholic Faith by his support of baby-killing under cover of law, among many other things, gave a speech in 1991 to explain that he was not seeking the Democrat Party's 1992 presidential nomination in which he blasphemed Saint Paul by saying he had "run the race, fought the good fight, kept the faith." What faith? In himself and his liberalism? In his family's "legacy"? What faith? What fight?
It was just a year later that then Arkansas Governor William Jefferson Clinton explained in his acceptance address at the Democrat Party national convention at Madison Square Garden in the City of New York, New York, on July 16, 1992, how he, "the man from hope" (Arkansas, that is) had "hope" in his own version of the American dream
Tonight, as plainly as I can, I want to tell you who I am, what I believe, and where I want to lead America.
I never met my father. He was killed in a car wreck on a rainy road three months before I was born, driving from Chicago to Arkansas to see my mother.
After that, my mother had to support us, so we lived with my grandparents while she went back to Louisiana to study nursing. I can still see her clearly tonight through the eyes of a three-year-old, kneeling at the railroad station and weeping as she put me back on the train to Arkansas with my grandmother.
She endured that pain because she knew her sacrifice was the only way she could support me and give me a better life. My mother taught me. She taught me about family and hard work and sacrifice. She held steady through tragedy after tragedy, and she held our family - my brother and I - together through tough times.
As a child, I watched her go off work each day at a time when it wasn't always easy to be a working mother.
As an adult, I watched her fight off breast cancer, and again she has taught me a lesson in courage. And always, always, always she taught me to fight.
That's why I'll fight to create high-paying jobs so that parents can afford to raise their children today.
That's why I'm so committed to make sure every American gets the health care that saved my mother's life and that women's health care gets the same attention as men's.
That's why I'll fight to make sure women in this country receive respect and dignity, whether they work in the home, out of the home, or both.
You want to know where I get my fighting spirit? It all started with my mother. Thank you, Mother. I love you.
When I think about opportunity for all Americans, I think about my grandfather. He ran a country store in our little town of Hope. There was no food stamps back then, so when his customers, whether they were White or Black who worked hard and did the best they could, came in with no money, well, he gave them food anyway. He just made a note of it. So did I.
Before I was big enough to see over the counter, I learned from him to look up to people other folks looked down on.
My grandfather just had a high school education- a grade school education- but in that country store he taught me more about equality in the eyes of the Lord than all my professors at Georgetown, more about the intrinsic worth of every individual that all the philosophers at Oxford, more about the need for equal justice under the law than all the jurists at Yale Law School.
If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather.
I learned a lot from another person too: a person who for more than 20 years has worked hard to help our children, paying the price of time to make sure our schools don't fail them. Someone who traveled our state for a year, studying, learning, listening, going to PTA meetings, school board meetings, town hall meetings, putting together a package of school reforms recognized around the Nation, and doing it all while building a distinguished legal career and being a wonderful, loving mother.
That person is my wife.
Hillary taught me. She taught me that all children can learn and that each of us has a duty to help them do it.
So if you want to know why I care so much about our children, and our future, it all started with Hillary. I love you. . . .
We can seize this moment, make it exciting and energizing and heroic to be American again. We can renew our faith in each other and in ourselves. We can restore our sense of unity and community.
As the Scripture says, "our eyes have not yet seen, nor our ears heard, nor minds imagined" what we can build.
But I can't do this alone. No President can. We must do it together. It won't be easy, and it won't be quick. We didn't get into this mess overnight, and we won't get out of it overnight. But we can do it- with commitment, creativity, diversity and drive.
We can do it. We can do it.
We can do it. We can do it. We can do it.
I want every person in this hall and every person in this land to reach out and join us in a great new adventures, to chart a bold new future.
As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy's summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown, I head that call clarified by a professor name Carol Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest Nation in history because our people had always believed in two things- that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so.
That kind of future entered my life the night our daughter, Chelsea, was born. As I stood in the delivery room, I was overcome with the thought that God had given me a blessing my own father never knew- the chance to hold my child in my arms.
Somewhere at this very moment a child is being born in America. Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family and a hopeful future. Let it be our cause to see that that child has a chance to live to the fullest of her God-given capacities.
Let it be our cause to see that child grow up strong and secure, braced by her challenges but never struggling alone, with family and friends and a faith that in America, no one is left out; no one is left behind.
Let it be our cause that when this child is able, she gives something back to her children, her community and her country. Let it be our cause that we give this child a country that is coming together, not coming apart, a country of boundless hopes and endless dreams, a country once again lifts its people and inspires the world. Let that be our cause our commitment and our New Covenant.
My fellow Americans, I end tonight where it all began for me- I still believe in a place called Hope. God bless you, and God bless America.
William J. Clinton's Acceptance Address, 1992
Get the idea? Each presidential aspirant's "rise to the top" is yet another chapter in the American "success" story, in the American "dream," if you will. Men who started with nothing had "hope" that they could rise above their origins. (All right, all right. Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush could not claim that they rose "above" their social origins.)
As noted a few days ago in Secular Saviors to the Naturalist Right, Secular Saviors to the Naturalist Left, the mania produced by the naturalism of American electoral politics convinces many millions of people to place their "hope" and their "faith" in this or that candidate, in this or that political party, this or that political ideology or philosophy. This is all too natural, pun intended, for those who are steeped in naturalism. It is positively tragic when Catholics, including traditionally-minded Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide, take leave of their senses and blaspheme Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to exclaim in breathlessly histrionic terms that a particular candidate is "our only hope." This is insanity, which is a lot more polite than pointing out that this is a grave offense against the simple fact that no human being is "our only hope." Indeed, it is completely irrational to claim that men who are possessed of one mistaken idea after another are "our only hope" and can turn back the tide of this or that anti-Catholic force in the world.
Although so few people want to consider this truth, it is a simple fact that the world is not "bettered" by electoral politics, which is but a sideshow from the devil to distract people from the business of sanctifying their immortal souls and working for the conversion of their nations to the one true Faith and hence to place them under the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.
Just look at the hordes of people gushing over with enthusiasm for their candidates in this current presidential election cycle? Most of these people have not one blessed clue as to why human problems occur (Original and Actual Sin) and how they are to be resolved (the reform of individual souls in cooperation with Sanctifying Grace). They are indeed hoping against hope in but mere mortals and their naturalist dreams.
Once again, not that anyone wants to consider Catholicism in the "rush" of all of this false "excitement," it is important to remember that there is only one path to personal and social order: the Catholic Faith.
The Catholic Faith, the one and only true Faith, has survived the assaults of the Jews of the Mosaic Covenant and of the Talmud from Pentecost Sunday to the present day. The Catholic Faith will survive whatever current and future assaults will be launched against individual Catholics by the ancient enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom of Holy Mother Church. So what if there is going to be a period of overt persecution? This has only made the Church Militant on earth stronger in the past, has it not? Why should it be any different now?
The Catholic Faith, the one and only true Faith, survived the assaults of Roman emperors from the time of Nero in 67 A.D. to the time of the Edict of Milan in the year 313 A.D. Over thirteen million Catholics were put to death by the brute force of the state because they would not burn even one grain of incense to the false gods. Many of these Catholics were citizens of the Roman Empire who prayed for the emperor and other civil officers, obeying just laws and paying their taxes. Some even performed military duty in the service of the empire. They simply would not worship the emperor as "god" or sacrifice to the other "deities" in vogue in the popular culture. Why should we expect our situation to be any better today?
The Catholic Faith, the one and only true Faith, survived the assaults of the Mohammedans at the Battle of Lepanto and at the Gates of Vienna as Pope Saint Pius V, a Dominican, urged Catholics worldwide to pray Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary to defeat the Turkish infidels. Yes, the Rosary, the weapon that Our Lady herself gave to Saint Dominic de Guzman, the founder of the Order of Preachers, in order to defeat Albingensianism. Our Lady invited Saint Bernadette Soubirous to pray the Rosary in the Grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes, France, 150 years ago next month! Our Lady told Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos to pray the Rosary for the conversion of poor sinners. Why do we think that praying our Rosaries is "doing nothing" to truly help our nation to be converted to the true Faith?
The Catholic Faith, the one and only true Faith, survived the bloody assaults of the Protestant Revolt against the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had instituted through His Catholic Church to effect man's return to Him. Over 72,000 Catholics were put to death under orders issued by the decrepit King Henry VIII, Henry Tudor, in the thirteen years between 1534 and 1547. Great champions of the Catholic Faith, such as Blessed Edmund Campion, S.J., and thousands of others were raised up by Our Lord to bear a great witness to His true Church. Why should we be afraid of the petty tyrants of today when we have so much Catholic history to encourage us to pray for martyrdom at the hands of such tyrants?
The Catholic Faith, the one and only true Faith, was assaulted in Mexico by the Masonic, anticlerical revolutionaries there. Over a quarter of a million Catholics were put to death between 1915 and 1934. Thousands upon thousands of Catholics were put to death in Spain by the forces of Marxism and Judeo-Masonry during the Spanish Revolution. The common cry of Catholics in Mexico and Spain was "Viva Cristo Rey!" Should not that be our cry today?
The Catholic Faith, the one and only true Faith, was attacked mercilessly by the forces of Bolshevism in Russia, especially in the Ukraine and in Belarus and the Baltic States after their "annexation" during World War II, and in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Communism is still assaulting the Faith in parts of Russia and in Red China. Millions of Catholics were killed by the Communists of North Vietnam and Cambodia and elsewhere. And we are afraid of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? What utter silliness.
The Catholic Faith, the one and only true Faith, has been attacked in Germany by the Masonic forces of the Kulturkampf and the diabolical forces of the Third Reich. It was attacked in Its very seat, the Eternal City of Rome itself, following the overthrow of the Papal States in 1870 following the end of the Franco-Prussian War, ushering in a period of fierce anticlericalism that remains in many parts of Italy today. And we dare to look to false secular saviors possessed of one condemned idea after another as the means to provide us with "hope"?
Here, not that anybody particularly cares in the midst of the hyperbolic rhetoric being bandied about at present, is a little reality check on what the Catholic Church teaches concerning the necessary constituent elements of the just social order, which is achieved by the conversion of souls, not at the ballot box in a religiously indifferentist nation where it is considered to be a "virtue" not to be "denominational" in one's public discourse:
From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.
As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
Pope Pius XI put it this way in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925:
Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ. It will call to their minds the thought of the last judgment, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults; for his kingly dignity demands that the State should take account of the commandments of God and of Christian principles, both in making laws and in administering justice, and also in providing for the young a sound moral education.
The faithful, moreover, by meditating upon these truths, will gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal. If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God. If all these truths are presented to the faithful for their consideration, they will prove a powerful incentive to perfection. It is Our fervent desire, Venerable Brethren, that those who are without the fold may seek after and accept the sweet yoke of Christ, and that we, who by the mercy of God are of the household of the faith, may bear that yoke, not as a burden but with joy, with love, with devotion; that having lived our lives in accordance with the laws of God's kingdom, we may receive full measure of good fruit, and counted by Christ good and faithful servants, we may be rendered partakers of eternal bliss and glory with him in his heavenly kingdom.
It's like this, ladies and gentlemen: anyone who thinks that mere naturalism is going to "turn back" the tide against the likes of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who still maintains a great deal of support from Catholics, mostly in the conciliar structures but even in some sedevacantist chapels where pastors believe that it is not their "job" to discourage parishioners from supporting those who support (or have participated actively) in the chemical or surgical assassination of innocent preborn children,or the likes of Barack Obama is very shortsighted. Most Catholics have been bombarded with conciliarism's "reconciliation" with the errors of Modernity in the past forty years, a "reconciliation" that built on the ethos of Americanism that helped to shape its formation.
Our Lady stands ready to help us to help souls to see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith if we reject the sideshows provided by naturalism and turn to her, she who is our life, our sweetness and our hope, through her Most Holy Rosary to do so, enthroning our homes to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son and her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as we offer up our prayers and penances and sufferings and humiliations and sacrifices each day in reparation for our sins and those of the whole world.
The Apostles and those who followed them in the first centuries of the Church did not see the glories of Christendom with their own eyes. We may not see a restored Christendom with our own eyes. It may not be God's will for there to be a new Christendom. We must, however, simply keep doing the work in our families and among our friends and our relatives to replicate Christendom in our own homes and chapels, placing our hope in the Supernatural Life of Faith, Hope and Charity that was infused into our souls at Baptism, at which time the very inner life of the Blessed Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost dwelt within us for the first time. This Supernatural Life of Faith, Hope and Charity by means of Sanctifying Grace is the only path to personal order in our own lives. It is the only means ot social order and a true peace in the world. It is the only path to Heaven, our true home.
May Our Lady, the Queen of All Saints, help us to get home to Heaven as we try to plant a few seeds for the conversion of souls that might lead, please God and by her own maternal intercession, in a world where men are not shouting the names of political candidates but exclaim with joy and the love the cry that was on the lips of the Cristeros in Mexico and the Catholic martyrs of the Spanish Revolution:
Viva Cristo Rey!
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.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
The Holy Innocents, pray for us.
Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
