Just Plain Theater of the Absurd

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

              

Mr. Haney Pitches His Wares

Player piano version of Green Acres Theme

Mr. Eustace Haney: "Mister Douglas, I have a special deal for you today."

Mr. Oliver Wendell Douglas: "Haney, what is it this time?"

Haney: "Now, Mister Douglas, there's no need to get angry with me. I do have a special deal for you today."

Douglas: "All right, all right, Mr. Haney. What's your deal?"

Haney: "Well, you see here. I've got a tractor and a combine for sale. The tractor costs $700 and the combine costs four hundred dollars. However, I will send them both to to you for the special price of $1100."

Douglas, hesitating for a minute while pondering the offer, then in indigntation: "You crook you, Haney! $1100? That's no special price!"

            

Theme Song (Is anyone paying attention out there?)          The Hooterville Fire Department Marching Band

Before experts on Green Acres continue for a third time in the past six weeks to find the episode containing this exact dialogue, thereby wasting their time and helping me heap more coals on my immortal soul for contributing to their waste of time, let me stipulate today, as I did back at the end of September, that the dialogue above is an approximation of a scene from Green Acres that summarizes the method by which Mr. Eustace Haney, played by the late Pat Buttram, would try to hoodwink city slicker Oliver Wendell Douglas, played by the late Eddie Albert. Please don't waste your time trying to find the exact episode so that you can write to me to say that got it wrong. Repeat: the above dialogue from Green Acres, whose writers include farce as a means of social satire, is a re-creation of a particular scene that sticks out in my memory. Do not waste your time trying to "prove" anything to me. Thank you.

Why did I start this article in almost the exact same manner as I started two other articles six weeks ago now.? The answer is simple. The best response to absurdity is absurdity. The contemporary political world, shaped by the naturalist forces of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, is founded on the absurdity that men can know personal and social order without subordinating themselves at every moment of their lives to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and that it is not necessary for men to have belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace to persevere in virtue, striving to be good citizens of Heaven in order to be good citizens in the temporal realm here on earth.

The absurdity that is Protestantism has helped to spawn all of the other absurdities of the world in which we live in this anti-Incarnational era of Modernity. Most men live their lives in the mistaken, heretical belief that it is possible to know personal and social order without subordinating every single aspect of their lives at all times in all circumstances and in all places 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, for its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. This leads to many things, including to the deification of man as a result of the dethronement of the Social Reign Christ the King. Protestantism is the basis only for the continued degeneration of men and their societies over the course of time, having begun as a diabolically-inspired revolution against the Divine Plan that Our Lord Himself had instituted to effect man's return to Him through the magisterial authority and sanctifying offices of His Catholic Church.

Man is rootless once he "frees" himself from the authority of the Catholic Church. Protestantism convinces man that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did not found a visible, hierarchical society to teach, to govern and to sanctify all men on the face of this earth until He comes in glory on the Last Day to judge the living and the dead. Each man, therefore, is his own "pope" or "popessa," free to interpret Sacred Scripture, which is seen as the only source of Divine Revelation (Apostolic or Sacred Tradition being thus rejected as it needs the authority of a visible hierarchy to pronounce and explicate), leading quite inevitably to mutually contradictory conclusions as to the meaning of various passages, which is why there are today over 33,000 different Protestant sects, most of them right here in the United States of America. One who believes this framework of lies will come to believe that he is "saved' by making his "profession of faith" in the Name of the Lord or that the fact of his predestination to Heaven is proved by his worldly success. The Lutheran strain of Protestantism is founded on the sin of Presumption; the Calvinist strain is founded on the belief that material success is a sign of divine election. Both lead to the ruin of men and their societies.

Consider this account of the social effects of the Protestant Revolt as described by Father Edward Cahill, S.J., in A Framework of the Christian State:

The assumption that Protestantism brought a higher and purer moral life to the nations that came under its influence does not need elaborate refutation. It is a fact of uncontroverted history that "public morality did at once deteriorate to an appalling degree wherever Protestantism was introduced. Not to mention robberies of church goods, brutal treatment meted out to the clergy, secular and regular, who remained faithful, and the horrors of so many wars of religion," we have the express testimony of [Martin] Luther himself and several other leaders of the revolt, such as [Martin] Bucer and [Philip] Melancthon, as to the evil effects of their teaching; and this testimony is confirmed by contemporaries. Luther's own avowals on this matter are numberless. Thus he writes:

"There is not one of our Evangelicals, who is not seven times worse than before he belonged to us, stealing the goods of others, lying, deceiving, eating, getting drunk, and indulging in every vice, as if he had not received the Holy Word. If we have been delivered from one spirit of evil, seven others worse than the first have come to take its place."

 

And again:

"Men who live under the Gospel are more uncharitable, more irascible, more greedy, more avaricious than they were before as Papists."

 

Even Erasmus, who had at first favoured Luther's movement, was soon disillusioned. Thus he writes:

"The New Gospel has at least the advantage of showing us a new race of men, haughty, impudent, cunning, blasphemous . . . quarrellers, seditious, furious, to whom I have, to say truth, so great an antipathy that if I knew a place in the world free of them, I would not hesitate to take refuge therein."

 

That these evil effects of Protestantism were not merely temporary--the accidental results of the excitement and confusion which are peculiar to a stage of transition (although they were no doubt intensified thereby)--is shown from present-day statistics. The condition of domestic morality is usually best indicated by the statistics of divorce, and of illegitimate births, and by the proportion of legitimate children to the number of marriages; while statistics of general criminality, where they can be had, would convey a fair idea of the individual and public morality in any given place. According to these tests Protestant countries are at the present day much inferior to Catholic countries in domestic and public morality.

The following examples will help to illustrate this:

Italy, Spain and Ireland are perhaps the most Catholic countries of the world, while Britain, the United States of America, with Denmark and Scandinavia, are the most Protestant. Legalised divorce does not exist at all (1930-1931) in any country of the former group. It exists in all the countries of the latter group; and the number of divorces is increasing year by year. In England and Wales there were 3,740 divorces in 1928, being about one divorce to every 114 marriages. In the United States of America the number of divorces in 1916 was 112,031, being one divorce in every 10 marriages. Ten years later (viz., in 1926), the number of divorces reached the appalling total of 181,000, being about one to every seven marriages. The statistics of illegitimate births tell a similar tale. Thus in 1927 the proportion of illegitimate births was at 44 per 1,000 for England and Wales, and 29 per 1,000 for th Irish Free State.

Again, the Irish Free State has a very high proportion of births to marriages, one of the highest in Europe. England, where the birth-rate has now fallen to nearly 16 per 1,000, has the lowest birth-rate in the world as compared with the marriage rate. While all Catholic countries have a fairly high birth-rate, the birth-rate is so low in some Protestant or non-Catholic countries that the human race there is hastening to extinction. This is in fact what has occurred to the original Protestant settlers in the New England States of America, who have practically disappeared, being in large measure supplanted by the Irish, the Canadians and others.

Exact statistics of criminality are difficulty to obtain; and trustworthy comparisons between different countries are more difficult still. Anyone, however, who remembers the constant recurrence of the ceremony of presenting "white gloves" to the judges of the criminal courts in Ireland owing to the complete absence of criminal indictments a few years ago, when the country was in its normal state, and contrasts this fact with the records of the criminal courts of Great Britain and U.S.A. may draw his own conclusions.

It has been not inaptly said that "greed, robbery, oppression, rebellion,  repression, wars, devastation, depredation, would be a fitting inscription on the tomb of early Protestantism." We shall see that the latter effects of the new religion, though no so violent or dramatic, have fulfilled the promise of its earlier years. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, first published in 1932, republished by Roman Catholic Books, pp. 102-104.)

 

As we know, the situation is only worse today. Protestantism has given rise to outright unbelief as the lowest common denominator in Western nations. It must do this. People who are deprived of the Sacrament of Penance and of the worthy reception of Our Lord in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament by means of Holy Communion--and who do not accept the teaching authority of the Catholic Church--must fall prey to one or more errors, some of whose effects will not be made manifest immediately (as the appearance of "outward virtue" remains in some) but will inevitably result in a the world we see around us. Influenced by the effects of Protestantism and by the relentless efforts of the forces of the worldwide revolution against the Catholic Church that included all of the organized forces of naturalism, including Judeo-Masonry, formerly Catholic nations have fallen precipitately into the abyss, especially since those few Catholics, relatively speaking, who do practice the Faith today are deprived of the true sacraments as a result of the web of deception perpetrated by the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the name of Catholicism. It is only Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary (and the instances in which the true Mass is offered, no matter schismatically, by validly ordained priests in the conciliar structures) by which those good Catholics who truly love the Faith in the conciliar structures and are trying to adhere to it as best they can have been able to withstand these forces.

The statistics presented by Father Cahill seventy-five years ago did not imagine how the effects of the Protestant Revolt and Judeo-Masonry and Modernism would combine to produce a brave new world of legalized surgical and chemical child-killing, of the starvation and dehydration of living human beings who are merely brain damaged and who are not near the point of natural death, positive acts of euthanasia to do away with the elderly and the deformed and the terminally ill, of the systematic poisoning of the souls of children by means of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and the Ninth Commandments, of the daily bombardment of obscene sights and sounds in supermarkets and other establishments where people must shop for the necessities of life (to say nothing of the public promotion of sin under cover of law and in every vestige of popular culture imaginable), of the arrogation unto the state of the Natural Law right of parents to educate their children, of the forcible, in many instances, vaccination of children with poisons that alter their DNA, cause, good evidence suggests, autism and brain damage, among other side effects, of the elevation of the "rights" of animals over those of human beings, of the open flaunting and promotion of perversity, of usurious practices that would make Shylock himself seem like an exemplar of distributive justice, of a civil state that believes its citizens exist to enable it to take more and more of their private property (income, land) and their legitimate freedoms in the name of "national security." (Yes, for those of you keeping score at home, that was just one sentence.) Although Martin Luther and John Calvin and Thomas Cranmer did not intend for the world to look like this when they made their own respective breaks with the Catholic Church, their erroneous, heretical views were bound to produce such a world. There is no stopping the forces of naturalist evil once those who believe in theological heresies are able to convince large numbers of people to abandon the only path to Heaven and the only path to social order, the Catholic Church.

Father Denis Fahey, the great apostle of the Social Reign of Christ the King, put it this way in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

The rejection by Luther of the visible Catholic Church opened the door, not only to the abuses of absolute rulers, supreme in Church and State, but soon led to an indifference to all ecclesiastical organizations. As faith in the supernatural life of grace and the supernatural order grew dim and waned, the way was made smooth for the acceptance of Freemasonry. The widespread loss of faith in the existence of the supernatural life and the growing ignorance of the meaning of the Redemption permitted the apostles of Illuminism and Masonry to propagate the idea that the true religion of Jesus Christ had never been understood or been corrupted by His disciples, especially by the Church of Rome, the fact being that only a few sages in secret societies down the centuries had kept alive the true teaching of Jesus Christ. According to this ‘authentic’ teaching our Saviour had established a new religion, but had simply restored the religion of the state of nature, the religion of the goodness of human nature when left to itself, freed from the bonds and shackles of society. Jesus Christ died a martyr for liberty, put to death by the rulers and priests. Masons and revolutionary secret societies alone are working for the true salvation of the world. By them shall original sin be done away with and the Garden of Eden restored. But the present organization of society must disappear, by the elimination of the tyranny of priests, the despotism of princes and the slavery resulting from national distinctions, from family life and from private property.”

Masonry is, therefore, a naturalistic society, that is to say, a society which claims to make men good and true, independently of the Supernatural Life which comes to us from the Divinity of Christ through His sacred Humanity. In reality it is only through that Life that we can be really virtuous men and live fully ordered lives. Masonry thus, in fact and in deed, puts itself in the place of the visible Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. The attitude of indifference and superiority to national differences and distinctions affected by Masonry is a mere aping of the true supranationalism of the Catholic Church, so eminently respectful of the true concept of national traits and true glories. The pretended supranationalism of Masonry can only lead to the corruption of the true concept of nationalism and to the destruction of all that is enshrined for us in the words ‘native land.’ It has its logical issue in national enslavement under a world-republic.

Masonry’s claim to make men good, while inculcating indifference to the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, is already implicitly the divinization of man, for it makes many natural resources superior to the Life which comes from Him to us. The inner esoteric significance of its symbolism, by which the minds of its adepts are moulded, is the unabashed proclamation of man’s divinity, tendering inevitably towards the deification of the generative powers of the human race; this is the hidden meaning of the two interlaced triangles which figure so prominently on Masonic buildings as the crowning insult offered by Satan to the Blessed Trinity.

 

Father Fahey went on to explain that there can be only true liberty for human beings when they and the nations in which they live are subordinate to the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted to effect their return to Him through the Catholic Church:

By the grace of the Headship of the Mystical Body, our Lord Jesus Christ is both Priest and King of redeemed mankind and, as such, exercises a twofold influence upon us. Firstly, as a Priest, He communicates to us the supernatural life of grace by which we, while ever remaining distinct from God, can enter into the vision and love of the Blessed Trinity. We can thus become one with God, not, of course, in the order of substance or being, but in the order of operation, of the immaterial union of vision and love. The Divine Nature is the principle of the Divine Vision and Love, and by grace we are ‘made partakers of the Divine Nature.’ This pure Catholic doctrine is infinitely removed from Masonic pantheism. Secondly, as King, our Lord exercises an exterior influence on us by His government of us. As King, He guides and directs us socially and individually, in order to dispose all things for the reception of the Supernatural Life which He, as Priest, confers.

Society had been organized in the thirteenth century and even down to the sixteenth, under the banner of Christ the King. Thus, in spite of deficiencies and imperfections, man’s divinization, through the Life that comes from the sacred Humanity of Jesus, was socially favoured. Modern society, under the influence of Satan, was to be organized on the opposite principle, namely, that human nature is of itself divine, that man is God, and, therefore, subject to nobody. Accordingly, when the favourable moment had arrived, the Masonic divinization of human nature found its expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. The French Revolution ushered in the struggle for the complete organization of the world around the new divinity–Humanity. In God’s plan, the whole organization of a country is meant to aid the development of a country is meant to aid the development of the true personality of the citizens through the Mystical Body of Christ. Accordingly, the achievement of true liberty for a country means the removal of obstacles to the organized social acceptance of the Divine Plan. Every revolution since 1789 tends, on the contrary, to the rejection of that plan, and therefore to the enthronement of man in the place of God. The freedom at which the spirit of the revolution aims is that absolute independence which refuses submission to any and every order. It is the spirit breathed by the temptation of the serpent: ‘For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened; and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Man decided then that he would himself lay down the order of good and evil in the place of God; then and now it is the same attitude.”

 

The ultimate result of all of this is the deification of the state and man's subordination to the state as it increases its hold over the lives of ordinary citizens, doing so either incrementally or by the swift and efficient exercise of brute force (or a combination of these two in some instances). Father Fahey explained that this tyranny was bound to occur as a result of the likes of Luther and the Protestant Revolt and as a result of the rise of the organized forces of naturalism represented by various political ideologies and by Judeo-Masonry itself:

[Jean-Jacques] Rousseau carries on the revolution against the order of the world begun by Luther. Luther’s revolt was that of our individuality and sense-life against the exigencies of the supernatural order instituted by God. It was an attempt to remain attached to Christ, while rejecting the order established by Christ for our return to God. Rousseau’s revolt was against the order of natural morality, by the exaltation of the primacy of our sense-life.

The little world of each one of us, our individuality, is a divine person, supremely free and sovereignly independent of all order, natural and supernatural. he state of Liberty or of sovereign independence is the primitive state of man, and the nature of man demands the restoration of that state of liberty. It is to satisfy this-called exigency that ‘Father of modern thought’ invented the famous myth of the Social Contract.

The Social Contract gives birth to a form of association in which each one, while forming a union with all the others, obeys only himself and remains as free as before. Each one is subject to the whole, but he is not subject to any man, there is no man above him. He is absorbed in the common Ego begotten in the pact, so that obeying the law, he obeys only himself. Each citizen votes in order, that by the addition of the number of votes, the general will, expressed by the vote of the majority, is, so to say, a manifestation of the ‘deity’ immanent in the multitude. The People are God (no wonder we have gotten used to writing the word with a capital letter). The law imposed by this ‘deity’ does not need to be just in order to exact obedience. In fact, the majority vote makes or creates right and justice. An adverse majority vote can not only overthrow the directions and commands of the Heads of the Mystical Body on earth, the Pope and the Bishops, but can even deprive the Ten Commandments of all binding force.

To the triumph of those ideals in the modern world, the Masonic denial of original sin and the Rousseauist dogma of the natural goodness of man have contributed not a little. The dogma of natural goodness signifies that man lived originally in a purely natural paradise of happiness and goodness and that, even in our present degraded state, all our instinctive movements are good. We do not need grace, for nature can do for what grace does. In addition, Rousseau holds that this state of happiness and goodness, of perfect justice and innocence, of exemption from servile work and suffering, is natural to man, that is, essentially demanded by our nature. Not only then is original sin nonexistent, not only do we not come into the world as fallen sons of the first Adam, bearing in us the wounds of our fallen nature, is radically anti-natural. Suffering and pain have been introduced by society, civilization and private property. Hence we must get rid of all these and set up a new form of society. We can bet back the state of the Garden of Eden by the efforts of our own nature, without the help of grace. For Rousseau, the introduction of the present form of society, and of private property constitute the real Fall. The setting up of a republic based on his principles will act as a sort of democratic grace which will restore in its entirety our lost heritage. In a world where the clear teaching of the faith of Christ about the supernatural order of the Life of Grace has become obscured, but were men are still vaguely conscious that human nature was once happy, Rousseau’s appeal acts like an urge of homesickness. We need not be astonished, then, apart from the question of Masonic-Revolutionary organization and propaganda, at the sort of delirious enthusiasm which takes possession of men at the thought of a renewal of society. Nor need we wonder that men work for the overthrow of existing government and existing order, in the belief that they are not legitimate forms of society. A State not constructed according to Rosseauist-Masonic principles is not a State ruled by laws. It is a monstrous tyranny, and must be overthrown in the name of "Progress" and of the "onward march of democracy.’ All these influences must be borne in mind as we behold, since 1789, the triumph in one country after another or Rousseauist-Masonic democracy.

 

It is no wonder, therefore, that the world around us keeps degenerating more and more. What is a true wonder is that so many Catholics believe that there is some other way than the restoration of Christendom by which the process of this degeneration can be retarded, if not reversed. Most people are so focused on short-term results that they never address the root causes of social problems, which are to found in Original Sin and man's fallen human nature and, proximately speaking, the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King by all of the forces noted above. Indeed, most people, including even most traditionally-minded Catholics all across the ecclesiastical divide, don't even want to hear about root cause of social problems, which have been summarized by any number of true popes in the past two hundred years. Pope Saint Pius X's summary, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, is an excellent one indeed, reminding us that false ideas of any sort are never the means by which the souls of men and thus the state of societies can be reformed:

. . . .For there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body. . . . . But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He [Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ] has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

 

As is the case in the lives of individuals, the lives of nations become totally chaotic when Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not recognized publicly as King and when His Most Blessed Mother is not honored as our Immaculate Queen. People scatter about in all sorts of different directions trying "resolve" this or that problem, wasting much time on watching "talking heads" discuss subjects from a purely naturalist perspective instead of praying Rosaries as Our Lady told us at Fatima that we had to be pray to help ourselves to get to Heaven to save the souls of many others from the fires of Hell. What has been the perennial exercise of electing a President of the United States of America sees all manner of otherwise rational, sane individuals "lose it," colloquially speaking, spending time and money and energy on efforts that will always fail to advance the cause of Christ the King and wind up further enabling the errors responsible for the overthrow of Christendom.

Conciliarism has added to this confusion, denying that the Catholic Church has any right given her by her Divine Founder and Invisible Head Himself to be recognized by each civil state as its true religion or that the civil state has an obligation to help to foster those conditions wherein its citizens can better sanctify and thus save their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church. As noted two days ago in Cut From the Same Cloth, the heresy of Americanism helped to pave the way for conciliarism, bifurcating a Catholic's spiritual and temporal obligations, making it appear as though everything about the modern civil state, including the government of the United States of America, was perfectly compatible with the Catholic Faith. This has produced one accommodation after another to the needs of various career politicians as various evils have been enshrined under cover of law and promoted in every aspect of popular culture. The current crop of pro-abortion Catholics of both major political parties in the United States of America is merely the continuation of the long, long Americanist tradition of subordinating the Faith to the needs of this or that secular "savior."

Thus it has been in our religiously indifferentist and culturally pluralist nation that certain Protestant "ministers" and lay "experts" have taken the lead in many instances in opposing social evils and in opposing various candidates for public office who support the unrestricted slicing and dicing of little babies in their mothers' wombs under cover of law. Some of these Protestant "ministers" and "lay experts" are not truly pro-life as they support one or more "exceptions" to the Fifth Commandments absolute prohibition on the direct, intentional taking of any innocent human life from the moment of fertilization until the moment of natural death willed by God Himself. However, these Protestant "ministers" and "lay experts" are seen by many "pro-life" Catholics as "guides" to help them to vote the "right" way in a given election.

One of the truly diabolical aspects of this is that the conciliar "bishops" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism usually--and only with a few notable exceptions--make general statements about the "consistent ethic of life (which includes opposition to capital punishment and war and environmental pollution and making sure that your dog gets walked sufficiently during the course of a day) without condemning the egregious words and actions of pro-abortion public officials, including those who are, at least ostensibly, Catholics. The conciliar "bishops" have even gone so far as to "cozy up" to pro-abortion politicians, communicating to the average person who believes that the Judeo-Masonic electoral system in the United States of America is going to "change things" that abortion, as regrettable as it is, is merely "one factor out of many" when determining for whom to vote in a given election.

Marion Gordon " Pat" Robertson, who is a Southern Baptist (and not a member of the Assemblies of God, which one might think because of his bent in the direction of Protestant Pentecostalism), has been one of the people to whom "pro-life" Americans regrettably have looked to for guidance over the years. People still look to "Pat" Robertson for guidance even though the former "Reverend's" political judgments have been atrocious. Indeed, Pat Robertson and his paid stooge, the smarmy Ralph Reed, the Executive Direction of Robertson's Christian Coalition from 1989 to 1997, worked very hard to defeat the candidacy of Patrick Joseph Buchanan for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1996, choosing to support the allegedly "electable" candidate, the hapless, mercurial, inarticulate mumbler named Senator Robert Joseph Dole, Jr. (R-Kansas), a thirty-third degree Freemason (as was his vice presidential running mate, Jack Kemp, marking the twentieth anniversary of the all-Masonic ticket of Gerald Lynch Ford, Jr., and Robert Joseph Dole, Jr.).

The sub rosa campaign waged by the forces of Robertson and Reed campaign against Buchanan, whom I supported because I still labored under some delusions about the ability of electoral politics to "change" things and because he was the only completely, no exceptions pro-life candidate who could win the Republican nomination and at least make the race against incumbent President William Jefferson Blyth Clinton something of a challenge, was particularly vicious in the Palmetto State of South Carolina. Dole got the nomination, proving himself be a thoroughly clueless campaigner, something that did not take a great deal of intelligence to figure out would be the case, falling way behind Clinton in the polls by the middle of September of 1996. Robertson began to distance himself from Dole, who also had the support in the primaries of Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and the political action committee of the National Not-So-Right to Life Committee, saying that "It will take a miracle from God for Bob Dole to get elected." As a chap related to me in a fraternal way (but who believes his older brother is stark raving mad for believing in the Faith) was wont to say in his youth, "Do tell," which translates these days into "Duhhhhhh!"

Undeterred, Robertson endorsed then Texas Governor George Walker Bush as he sought the Republican Presidential nomination in the year 2000. Bush was a bit, although not much, more articulate than Dole. Like Dole, Bush supported direct, intentional baby-killing in some instances. He appointed a bevy of pro-aborts to the senior ranks of his administration and the judiciary in the State of Texas, going so far as to sign a bill that named a highway in the Houston, Texas, area, after an abortionist, John Coleman, who had been a major funder of the Democrat and of the Republican Parties in the Lone Star State. Pro-life leaders in Texas received assurance from a chap named Karl Rove that Governor Bush would never let such a thing, naming a highway for a baby-killer, happen. It did, not that it mattered at all to Pat Robertson, who said in 1997 and again in 2001 that while he was opposed to forced abortion and the one-child-per-family policy in China that they, the Red Chinese, "have to do something to feed their people." Oh, no, the great "leader" of the "Christian Right," attempting to fill a void that had been created by a consistent sell-out of the conciliar "bishops" to the left-wing of the Democrat Party (a continuation of the basic policy of the preconciliar bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States of America), had to get "behind the winner," George Walker Bush.

Yes, George Walker Bush won the 2000 election, doing so because he won the twenty-five electoral votes of the State of Florida as a result of winning, although very narrowly the popular vote in the Sunshine State (a little less sunshine would be good, please, Floridians, thank you). Bush won the popular vote quite honestly, not as a result of election fraud as charged by the camp of then Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., who won the national popular vote total by plurality of 540,000. Bush, whom many of us predicted was bound to lose the election as a result of his ignorance and incoherence, only won the popular vote in the State of Florida because 96,837 leftists voted their conscience, voting for Ralph Nader on the Green Party ticket rather than voting for Gore as the "lesser of two evils." Bush got elected precisely because some leftists were fed up with "tweedle dum" and "tweedle dumber." There would never have been a "President" George Walker Bush if only 5,000 of those Nader votes in the State of Florida had gone to Gore, an amount that would have given Gore a 3,000 vote plurality over Bush in that state. The likelihood is, of course, that Gore would have won most of the Nader votes, making the election a route in his sorry behalf. (If one discounts Pat Buchanan's 17,000 votes as going mostly for Bush if he, Buchanan, was not the presidential nominee of the Reform Party, Gore would have won Florida by something around 70,000 or so votes. The point is this: George W. Bush only won because there were some Americans who voted their conscience against a fraudulent election system.)

The results of the 2000 election, skewed as they were by the Ralph Nader, whose ticket got 2,883,105 votes nationwide, received "legitimacy" following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, making the tainted president, George W. Bush, into a nationally-hailed leader. Bush had Ralph Nader to thank for his election in 2000, not Pat Robertson. He had Senator John F. Kerry (D-Massachussets) and the events of September 11, 2001, to thank for his relatively narrow re-election (by 3,011,166 votes or 2.46 percent) in 2004. Pat Robertson was not a "kingmaker" then. However, he, one of many "popes," if you will, of Protestantism, is not through trying to influence the course of American politics by choosing to be on the "winning side," having anointed the pro-abortion, pro-perversion former Mayor of the City of New York, New York, Rudolph William Giuliani as his choice for the 2008 presidential nomination of the Republican party. Once again, you see, Pat Robertson is trying to get on the "winning side" despite his differences, some of which are not all that pronounced, with Giuliani on some issues (Giuliani is fully pro-abortion, Robertson, who supports contraception, is partly-pro-life and partly pro-abortion).

Robertson, who is not exactly a partisan of Catholic Social Teaching concerning the Social Reign of Christ the King, would find the following reiteration of essential Catholic truth as applied to Rudolph William Giuliani to be "harsh" and not reflective of "political reality:"

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

Why would Pat Robertson do this? Well, there is quite an advantage to being on the "winning side." Some of Robertson's Regent University Law School's graduates have found their way into the current administration of President George Walker Bush, including one Monica Goodling, who served in various capacities in the United States Department of Justice under Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, resigning over her role in seeking to oust eight United States Attorneys in various parts of the nation. Indeed, there are 150 graduates of Regent University Law School working in the George Walker Bush administration. Pat Robertson wants to keep it that way, ladies and gentleman. It is really that simple. Rudy always does good turns for his friends (see Kerik, Bernard, for example) and loyalists. A "President" Giuliani would see to it that at least some of Robertson's proteges are kept onboard in his administration. It's all about the power and the influence.

Oh, sure, there is also a common bondage that Giuliani and Robertson have with the interests of the State of Israel. Giuliani is being advised about foreign policy by, among other neoconservatives, David Frum, a self-admitted supporter of an "Israel-centered" United States foreign policy, and Norman Podhoretz, a leading ne conservative who advised Giuliani recently about "World War IV." This is all near and near to Robertson, who believes that the State of Israel has been chosen by God to bring about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies. Indeed, it is this common bondage with the interests of the State of Israel that most closely unite Giuliani and Robertson with each other. It is how they developed their friendship as they spoke about Israel on a airplane flight from that country back to the United States of America in 2003. While Pat Robertson does indeed want to keep his boys and girls from Regent University Law School in power in Washington, D.C., after January 20, 2009, make no mistake that he also wants to see an "Israel-centered" foreign policy continue. After all, Robertson endorsed Israel's brutal, savage bombing of southern Lebanon in 2006, an attack that displaced nearly one million Lebanese civilians, many of them Maronite Rite Catholics, and killed at least one thousand people and wounded many more. Robertson wasn't going to be on the Ron Paul bandwagon, now was he?

This utter madness is all the result, proximately speaking, of that Augustinian monk named Martin Luther and the band of heretics he let loose upon the world as a result. We would not be talking about "legalized abortion" or special "rights" for those steeped in unrepentant acts of perversity in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments or a "novus ordo secolorum" of the founders of the United States of America as the "model" for only "true" foundation of peace in the world, a pluralistic democracy. Protestantism paved the way for the triumph of religious indifferentism, which has been used so very well by the forces of Judeo-Masonry to create a world where everything but Catholicism is seen as the "solution" to the problems caused by Original and Actual Sin and that can be ameliorated only by a earnest effort to cooperate on a daily basis with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces.

Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, that the inexorable result of religious indifferentism is practical atheism:

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.

 

The theater of the absurd that is the modern world will one day fade away when the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is made manifest, whether before or at the end of the world as Our Lord comes in glory to judge the living and the dead. In the meantime, of course, we should take these words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, to heart:

Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.

Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)

Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.

It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.

 

Each strain of Protestantism rejects these fundamental truths. Judeo-Masonry has joined in Protestantism's unremitting warfare against these truths. Conciliarism has made its accommodation to Protestantism's and Judeo-Masonry's rejection of these truths. We must, therefore, remind one and all that the only path to personal and social order is to be found in the Catholic Church. While we bear ourselves kindly to all men, especially those to whom God's Providence puts in our paths on a daily basis, we must pray and work for the conversion of all men and nations to the one and only true Church, the Catholic Church  As the late Father Frederick Faber was quoted as saying by the author of the American preface to Saint Leonard of Port Maurice's The Hidden Treasure: Holy Mass:

"Where there is no Mass there is no Christianity."

 

Indeed. Where there is no Christianity, it can be added, there is no true civilization.

As I have noted in past commentaries, we should carry Green Scapulars on our persons at all times, never being bashful about handing them out, making sure to pray "Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and the hour of our death" every day for each person to whom we give a Green Scapular. We should also have an extra blessed Rosary or two on our person, replete with a simple "how to pray the Rosary" pamphlet, excluding, of course, the "luminous mysteries," to give out to a fallen away Catholic who does not understand the importance of being totally consecrated to Jesus through Mary or knows anything about the power of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary.

As week seek to reform our lives on a daily basis by cooperating with Sanctifying Grace, may we understand that the theater of the absurd that unites all of the forces arrayed against Christendom has been enabled enough. We need to combat it by our time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and by our deep and tender devotion to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, which we offer up to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Vivat Christus Rex! Vivat Maria Regina Immaculata!

Omnia instaurare in Christo.

 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our deaths. Amen.

 

All to you, Blessed Mother. All to your Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Theodore, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Saint Nicomedes, pray for us.

Saint Joseph Calasanctius, pray for us.

Pope Saint Zephyrinus, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, King of France, pray for us.

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, pray for us.

Saint Bartholomew, pray for us.

Saint Philip Benizi, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint John Eudes, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us, pray for us.

Saint Agapitus, pray for us.

Saint Helena, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.

Saints Monica, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Turibius, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Blessed Humbeline, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

Father Maximilian Kolbe,M.I., pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.