It Pays To Be Ignorant

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Ignorance abounds in the world in which we live. Most Protestants are ignorant of the true history of Christianity prior to 1517. Most Catholics, sadly, are ignorant of the perennial teaching of the true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, prior to 1958 or 1962. Most young people today are ignorant of anything resembling a true history of the world as they are steeped in the various "pleasures" and are absorbed in their own material pursuits, living for the "bread and circuses" of the moment.

I encountered this ignorance throughout the course of my thirty year career as a teacher of political science at the college level. Some students professed ignorance of the rules of plagiarism. A graduate student at Saint John's University in Jamaica, Queens, New York, in 1992 professed ignorance of the simple requirement to place words written by other human beings in quotation marks and to provide an appropriate citation (found in a footnote or in a parenthetical reference, as is used here on this site, or in a chapter note or in end notes). This student's entire paper was lifted from several pages in the late Dr. Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order.

Numerous other students over the years expressed the same ignorance, including one from Nigeria who was a student of mine at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, in the Fall of 1977 who said that his term paper on the electoral college, which was plagiarized from several sources from beginning to end (a teacher does tend to notice a difference between a student's written work on examinations and his work on term papers or other reports prepared outside of the classroom), was the product of his typing the words onto the pages. I told him, "I have no doubt that you typed the words. The words, however, do not belong to you." The student seemed amazed, saying, "I typee words. I borrow words from book." No, once again, my friends, I am not making this up at all.

Indeed, this very same student at Illinois State University had been caught red-handed cheating on the second examination in the American National Government course I was teaching. He received an "F" on that examination and was given a warning. His plagiarized term paper on the electoral college was handed in after he had completed his final examination, which included an essay containing the following "insights" about the same electoral college about which he had "pontificated" in his term paper:

The electoral college was created by Aristoti in 1801 but it did not go into effect until FDR put it ito effect in 1961. It consist of the three branch of government, executive, legislative, judicial. [This is presented to you exactly as it appeared on his examination.]

 

Then, of course, there is the simple stupidity or indolence that manifested themselves in the work of so many students, especially in the last ten years or so of my formal career as a college professor of political science. There was the time almost exactly ten years ago, when I adjuncting day and night at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University, when twelve students identified "Socrates" on a series of matching questions as the man who had just presided over the United States House of Representative's vote to impeach then President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton (the answer was Representative Ray La Hood, R-Illinois, who presided over the vote given his expertise in parliamentary procedure). Another student in that same class, who had clearly not reviewed his notes or done his reading assignments, provided the following passage in an essay describing the influence of the Protestant Revolt on rise of the modern civil state:

King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife, Catherine of Oregon, to marry his mysterious, Anne Boland. He wanted to declare himself head of the Baptist Church.

 

This shows you what a great teacher I was, huh? Seriously, the student who wrote that passage just quoted wrote what he thought he remembered from my classroom lecture without doing any reading or without asking me any questions. He was content to "slide by," if you will, figuring that there would be no consequences for his sloth and his desire to remain steeped in ignorance.

Although none of us is any better than those who are content to live their lives steeped in ignorance and disinformation, it is nevertheless quite interesting to encounter this ignorance day in and day out without fail (Every Error Imaginable) Then again, the United States of America was founded by men who were, despite their alleged "classical" education, ignorant of First and Last Things, ignorant of and most hostile to the simple truth that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. (President John Adams: "A Defense of the [State] Constitutions of Government of the United States of America," 1787-1788)

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821)

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, quoted in 200 Years of Disbelief, by James Hauck)

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."— (James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr„ April I, 1774

". . . Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest."—James Madison, spoken at the Virginia convention on ratification of the Constitution, June 1778

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."—James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December, 1813.)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weigthman, June 24, 1826, ten days before Jefferson's death.)

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries (Article 11 of the Treaty between the United States of America and Tripoli, June 10, 1797.)

 

That's a whole lot of ignorance of and hostility to the true Faith, ignorance and hostility that have metastasized over the course of time, aided and abetted by the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic forces that run American's concentration camps (public schools) and especially by the Talmudic forces in Hollywood that produce motion pictures that distort history and paint the Catholic Church in the worst light possible as the Faith is mocked and reviled. Add in a good measure of indolence as the average American is steeped in his daily dose of "bread and circuses," including the blathering naturalists who are to be heard on "talk radio" and seen on various twenty-four hour-a-day news channels, and accepts distortions of history as the truth. (The History Channel ought to be renamed The Anti-History Channel.)

Ignorance of true history and the necessity of men and their nations subordinating themselves at all times to the true Church in all that pertains to the good of souls has been exhibited by every single one of our contemporary presidents.

Take, for example, this famous quote of President Dwight David Eisenhower, a longtime Jehovah's Witness who "converted" to Presbyterianism shortly before his first presidential inauguration on January 20, 1953:

"Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is." (Quoted in Dr. Paul Johnson, A History of the American People.")

 

This is what Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, taught us concerning the inevitable result of religious indifferentism:

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.

 

Behold the state of the United States of America at the present time, awash with ignorance of and hostility to the true Faith, an ignorance and hostility that are exhibited by so many millions upon millions of Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, Catholics who have been miseducated in the schools and "religious education" programs run by the conciliar officials. Such an overwhelming level of ignorance among the general populace, Catholics included, makes the following series of answers given by a first class ignoramus, George Walker Bush, to Cynthia McFadden of the American Broadcasting Company's Nightline program seem eminently "reasonable:"

 

MCFADDEN: Is it literally true, the Bible?

BUSH: You know. Probably not ... No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament, for example is ... has got ... You know, the important lesson is "God sent a son."

MCFADDEN: So, you can read the Bible...

BUSH: That God in the flesh, that mankind can understand there is a God who is full of grace and that nothing you can do to earn his love. His love is a gift and that in order to draw closer to God and in order to express your appreciation for that love is why you change your behavior.

MCFADDEN: So, you can read the Bible and not take it literally. I mean you can -- it's not inconsistent to love the Bible and believe in evolution, say.

BUSH: Yeah, I mean, I do. I mean, evolution is an interesting subject. I happen to believe that evolution doesn't fully explain the mystery of life and ...

MCFADDEN: But do you believe in it?

BUSH: That God created the world, I do, yeah.

MCFADDEN: But what about ...

BUSH: Well, I think you can have both. I think evolution can -- you're getting me way out of my lane here. I'm just a simple president. But it's, I think that God created the Earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty, and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution. (ABC News: Excerpts: Cynthia McFadden Interviews President George W. Bush)

 

These answers, obviously, make Bush a first-class candidate as a potential "convert" to the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe in the literal truth of many texts of the Bible, including The Creation account of man found in the Book of Genesis. Ratzinger/Benedict believes that a "Jewish" reading of the Bible is a possible one and that it is not "clear" that the Old Testament points unequivocally to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:

First it declares that “the Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one, in continuity with the Jewish Scriptures of the Second Temple period, a reading analogous to the Christian reading, which developed in parallel fashion” (no. 22). It adds that Christians can learn a great deal from a Jewish exegesis practised for more than 2000 years; in return, Christians may hope that Jews can profit from Christian exegetical research (ibid.). I think this analysis will prove useful for the pursuit of Judeo-Christian dialogue, as well as for the interior formation of Christian consciousness. (Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to The Jewish People and Their Scriptures in the Christian Bible.)

“It is of course possible to read the Old Testament so that it is not directed toward Christ; it does not point quite unequivocally to Christ.  And if Jews cannot see the promises as being fulfilled in him, this is not just ill will on their part, but genuinely because of the obscurity of the texts and the tension in the relationship between these texts and the figure of Jesus.  Jesus brings a new meaning to these texts – yet it is he who first gives them their proper coherence and relevance and significance.  There are perfectly good reasons, then, for denying that the Old Testament refers to Christ and for saying, No, that is not what he said.  And there are also good reasons for referring it to him – that is what the dispute between Jews and Christians is about.” (Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World, p. 209.)

 

Sounds like George Walker Bush and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI have much in common with each other insofar as theology is concerned. Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict himself has endorsed the false concept of "theistic evolutionism" as has Bush in his own dunderhead, inarticulate manner:

POPE Benedict has said there is substantial scientific proof of the theory of evolution.

The Pope, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said the human race must listen to "the voice of the Earth" or risk destroying its very existence.

In a talk with 400 priests, the Pope spoke of the current debate raging in some countries, particularly the US and his native Germany, between creationism and evolution. 

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the Pope said.

“This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favour of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

But he said evolution did not answer all the questions and could not exclude a role by God.

“Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question 'where does everything come from?'“

His comments appear to be an endorsement of the doctrine of intelligent design. (Ratzinger and Evolution, found in Listen to the Voice of God)

 

Remember, George Walker Bush has called Mohammedanism a "religion of peace." Ratzinger/Benedict, although he has criticized Mohammedanism as irrational, has sought ways to work with "enlightened" representatives of Mohammedanism to work for "world peace" and and end to terrorism. Although Ratzinger/Benedict has years of schooling and Bush has always eschewed the things of the mind, both men have arrived at conclusions that are contrary to the Catholic Faith. Bush has done so because of a lack of thought and utter ignorance. Ratzinger/Benedict has done so because of his reliance upon the condemned New Theology that gave new intellectual life to Modernism in the 1940s and thereafter. It is not unreasonable to suppose that George Walker Bush, who supports the surgical slicing and dicing of children in certain "hard cases" and has funded the chemical assassination of countless millions of preborn babies by means of domestic and international "family planning" programs, might receive a "papal" "knighting," whether or not he, Bush, converts to the conciliar church.

The level of ignorance demonstrated by Bush in his interview with Cynthia McFadden is hardly unique. Bush's successor, the possibly Kenyan-born Barack Hussein Obama, has demonstrated his utter and complete ignorance of Christianity in an interview he gave to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Cathleen Falsani in 2004. Obama and his opponent in the recently concluded presidential election, United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, R-Arizona, both demonstrated incredible ignorance of various facts in their third and final debate, held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, New York, on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 (see Fallacies Galore).

Vice President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi have demonstrated gross ignorance of Catholic teaching (Memo to Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Their Conciliar Enablers and Fact and Fiction). Alaska Governor Sarah Heath Palin, who has as little grasp of logic and grammar as George Walker Bush, has demonstrated her ignorance quite a lot in interviews with the Columbia Broadcasting System's Katie Couric, sharing her ignorance of various issues with the aforementioned Joseph Biden (see It's Still Absolute Insanity). A country founded on false premises must produce a populace steeped in ignorance, a populace composed of so many people who are "impressed" with politicians and celebrities who are even more ignorant that they are.

Today, as noted in The Americas Belong to Our Lady, is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, she who is the Empress of the Americas, having been proclaimed as such by Pope Pius XII on October 12, 1945 (Columbus Day), who also proclaimed her in 1946 to be the Patroness of the Americas. Our Lady came to seek the conversion of not only the indigenous people of Mexico, a country which is near and dear to her Immaculate Heart, but to seek the conversion of all of the Americas to the Social Reign of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. How sad it is that even most Catholics, no less non-Catholics are ignorant of this fact, ignorant also of the fact that most of the Americas, including most of the territory of what is now the United States of America, was thoroughly Catholic before arrival and then the spread of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry.

Our Lady addressed the fifty-five year-old widower Juan Diego as "Juanito," meaning "my little Juan." Our Lady is Our Blessed Mother, given to us by her Divine Son to be our Mother as He hung on the gibbet of the Holy Cross to redeem us. She gave spiritual birth to us in great pain as the adopted sons and daughters of the Living God as she stood by her Divine Son's Holy Cross, at which she stands at every true offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the very unbloody re-presentation of that Sacrifice of Calvary, at the hands of a true bishop or a true priest. She addresses us as her "little ones," beckoning us to honor her as we consecrate ourselves totally to her Divine Son through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, surrendering our very liberty to become her slaves and thus give her most freely whatever merit we might earn for our prayers and from our sufferings and indulgenced actions and humiliations and calumnies that are sent our way.

We can imitate the humility and the docility and the obedience of "Juanito," Juan Diego, who suffered much at the hands of the then Apostolic Administrator (later Bishop) Monsignor Juan de Zumarraga. Juan Diego wanted to be faithful to Our Lady's requests of him, being ashamed of himself for missing an appointment with her on December 11, 1531, because of the illness of his beloved uncle. Our Lady spoke to him on this day, December 12, in the year 1531 in these words that bear repeating yet again in this particular article:

Know for certain that I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God. . . . Here I will show and offer my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of all those who love me, of those who cry to me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping and their sorrows and will remedy and alleviate their suffering, necessities and misfortunes. . . . Listen and let it penetrate into your heart. . . . Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. So not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else that you need?

 

Although most of those around us are ignorant of, if not overtly hostile to, the truths of the Holy Faith, we must not permit ourselves to indulge in the sloth of such ignorance, especially concerning the indispensable role of the Mother of God in our salvation and of her love and concern for the "new world" that was discovered by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492. We must pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, making reparation for our sins and those of the whole world, praying for the day when all men and all nations will be converted to the true Faith as a result of the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart a the fruit of the fulfillment of her Fatima Message.

Our Lady will never fail us. Not once. Ever. No, not even when things "don't work out" as we have hoped and prayed they would has Our Lady abandoned us. Not at all. She is there with us, standing by our own crosses as she stood so valiantly by the Cross of her Divine Son as our sins put Him to death and plunged the Fourth through Seventh Swords of Sorrow through her Immaculate Heart. She wants us to see the loving hand of God's ineffable Providence in all that happens to us, trusting in her all the more when "things don't work out" as we have hoped and prayed.

Indeed, the devil has been permitted by means of Freemasonry (which spread from and received the full support of the government of the United States of America to Mexico) to attack the Americas and uproot the Faith of many, although the Faith is alive and quite well in many parts of Latin America, including Mexico, where large numbers of Catholics assist at Masses offered by true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to the false church of conciliarism at all. This, too, has happened in God's Holy Providence. The graces won for us on Calvary by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, are sufficient for us to prosper under whatever cross, whether personal, social or ecclesiastical, that we are asked to bear.

Remember this, my friends, and remember it well: there is nothing--not one blessed thing--that we suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears that is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity and caused His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart to be pierced through and through with those Seven Swords of Sorrow. No one of us has any cause to complain about the situation in our own lives or that which exists in the world or that which we are suffering because of the plague of conciliarism. God has known from all eternity that we would be alive in these troubling times, meaning that there is work for us to do and that God has ordained it so from all eternity that we be the very ones to do this work of planting seeds for the restoration of Christendom.

As Pope Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925:

We may well admire in this the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendor, and that men's faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before.

 

Let us be aroused from our lethargy and our sloth and our ignorance to be about the business of making reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world as we, unworthy as we are, attempt to plant a few seeds for the re-conversion of the Americas to the true Faith and thus to the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego as she was expecting the Baby Jesus. Her miiraculous image left on Juan Diego's tilma showing her expecting the Baby Jesus is quite symbolic of the expectant desire she had then--and has now--for the conversion of the peoples of the Americas to the true Faith, that each person and each nation be born anew as they submit themselves to Christ the King through His Catholic Church. Over nine million indigenous people converted to the true Faith within a short time following her apparition to Juan Diego on this day 477 years ago, almost person for person the number of people lost to the Faith as a result of the Protestant Revolt in Europe. It was almost as though God was saying to those who left, "Fine. I will have My Mother get new souls to populate Holy Mother Church and hence Heaven itself." (Please listen also to the sermon of Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., TheDivineMessageOfGuadalupe.mp3.)

The Americas were indeed converted to Catholicism, which is why the devil had to attack the Faith in Latin America with such ferocity by means of the Masonic revolutionaries who were supported in both philosophical and monetary terms by the lodges in the nascent Untied States of America. Great crimes were committed against Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother as a result. These crimes continue to this day, which is, of course, one of the reasons that Saint Michael the Archangel appeared with Our Lady as she spoke to Juan Diego. Our Lady has crushed the head of the serpent with her heel and Saint Michael the Archangel is our helper to crush him in our own lives and in the Americas where he reigns, albeit temporarily, in civil government and in popular culture.

May we rely upon the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Empress and Patroness of the Americas, to help us to be courageous enough to plant seeds for the conversion of the Americas, including the United States of America, to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church. Perhaps an extra Rosary today on this glorious feast day will help us to be more faithful and more courageous in our promotion of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. Viva Cristo Rey!

"Juanito" Diego did not refuse Our Lady. How can we, Our Lady's "little ones" today, refuse to do so?

 

A blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to you all!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of Guadalupe!

 

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 Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Saint Turibius, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Blessed John Massias, pray for us.

Blessed Martin de Porres, pray for us.

Blessed Rose Philippine Duchesne, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues and Companions, pray for us.

Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, pray for us.

Mere Marie of New France, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints