Keeping It Catholic All The Time

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Well, the madness for the 2008 election cycle, which began in early-2006, will be over (perhaps) in less than forty-eight hours. The madness of the 2012 election cycle will then begin as all manner of Catholics all across and up and down the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide try to "figure" out some way to "regroup" for the future. Like inmates in an asylum, most Catholics will try to find a way out of their naturalistic strait-jackets "in time" for the 2012 election, absolutely and totally oblivious to the fact that they are in an asylum, a veritable madhouse, built by the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ specifically instituted for the salvation of souls and the rigiht ordering of nations and cemented together, brick-by-brick, by His ancient enemies of the Talmud and their allies in the lodges of Freemasonry.

Alas, there is no escape from the madhouse by plotting along the lines of naturalism. None. To believe that there is such a naturalistic escape one must live in a world of fantasy and illogic that leaves little place for the truths of the true Faith to penetrate the depths of one's soul and to be accepted. People are just expected to march off to the voting booths rather mindlessly as they chant the mantra, "Gotta vote for the lesser of two evils, gotta vote for the lesser of two evils, gotta vote for the lesser of two evils, gotta vote for the lesser of two evils." The inmates then go back to their cells, fitted neatly into their strait-jackets as they watch and/or listen to various strait-jacketed naturalists tell them how to "escape" the asylum of naturalism into which they have, each and every single one of them, voluntarily committed themselves.

Pope Leo XIII explained in Libertas, June 20, 1888, the the more a state is driven in the direction of the tolerance of evil is the more that it drives itself more and more away from the pursuit of the common temporal good undertaken in light of man's Last End:

But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind. One thing, however, remains always true -- that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.

And as to tolerance, it is surprising how far removed from the equity and prudence of the Church are those who profess what is called liberalism. For, in allowing that boundless license of which We have spoken, they exceed all limits, and end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty. And because the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and the unerring teacher of morals, is forced utterly to reprobate and condemn tolerance of such an abandoned and criminal character, they calumniate her as being wanting in patience and gentleness, and thus fail to see that, in so doing, they impute to her as a fault what is in reality a matter for commendation. But, in spite of all this show of tolerance, it very often happens that, while they profess themselves ready to lavish liberty on all in the greatest profusion, they are utterly intolerant toward the Catholic Church, by refusing to allow her the liberty of being herself free.

 

Mindful of the fact that each one of our own Actual Sins has added to the foul miasma afflicting the Church Militant and the world-at-large at this time, it is important to point out once again some of the proximate evils that are responsible for convincing so many believing Catholics that it is neither wise or prudent or necessary to "keep it Catholic all of the time."

1. The Protestant Revolt is the proximate source of the social evils we face in the world today:

Protestantism is evil. It is from the devil. It is not--and never can be--a source of personal salvation or social order.

2. The Protestant Revolt removed the check provided by the Catholic Church against abuses of civil power:

The civil state has grown exponentially over the course of time as Protestantism rejects the existence of a visible, Divinely-instituted, hierarchical body, Holy Mother Church, has having any right from God to intervene, albeit as an absolute last resort after her indirect power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, with those exercising civil power when the good of souls demands her motherly intervention. There is thus nothing beyond the arbitrary whims of men (whether expressed by a dictatorship or by the "will of the people") to determine the limits, if any, of the exercise of civil power.

3. Judeo-Masonry has institutionalized the overthrow of the Social Reign of Reign of Christ the King and instituted the Reign of Man:

Social discourse and public policy in the modern civil state have been corrupted by Protestantism and by Judeo-Masonry. Most men, including most Catholics, believe that it is not necessary to subordinate everything in personal and social life to the Deposit Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping. It is thus possible, we are told, to conduct personal and social affairs naturalistically without referencing that Deposit of Faith and without having belief in, access to and cooperation with the Sanctifying Offices of the Catholic Church to root out sin from one's life and to grow in sanctity.

4. Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry convince Catholics, therefore, that there is something short of Catholicism that can serve as the foundation of social order:

As Catholics breathe the air of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, which is the air of semi-Pelagianism (the belief that we more or less stir up "graces" within ourselves and that we are more or less "self-redemptive), they become influenced over the course of time into believing that Catholicism simply is not the "only" means by which to know personal and social order. They become duped by naturalism, reducing everything to but the natural level without seeking to pursue the common temporal good in light of their Last End, which can be accomplished only by adhering to the totality of the Catholic Faith without one iota of dissent.

Father Frederick Faber explained how easy it is to believe in the modern spirit of secular self-redemption:

All devotions have their characteristics; all of them have their own theological meanings. We must say something, therefore, upon the characteristics of the devotion to the Precious Blood. In reality the whole Treatise has more or less illustrated this matter. But something still remains to be said, and something will bear to be repeated. We will take the last first. Devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotional expression of the prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul is the apostle of redeeming grace. A devout study of his epistles would be our deliverance from most of the errors of the day. He is truly the apostle of all ages. To each age doubtless he seems to have a special mission. Certainly his mission to our is very special. The very air we breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel shapes of an old Pelagianism. The spirit of the world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it comes to pass that wrong theories among us are always constructed round a nuclear of Pelagianism; and Pelagianism is just the heresy which is least able to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is the age of the natural as opposed to the supernatural, of the acquired as opposed to the infused, of the active as opposed to the passive. This is what I said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat. Now, this exclusive fondness for the natural is on the whole very captivating. It takes with the young, because it saves thought. It does not explain difficulties; but it lessens the number of difficulties to be explained. It takes with the idle; it dispenses from slowness and research. It takes with the unimaginative, because it withdraws just the very element in religion which teases them. It takes with the worldly, because it subtracts the enthusiasm from piety and the sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with the controversial, because it is a short road and a shallow ford. It forms a school of thought which, while it admits that we have an abundance of grace, intimates that we are not much better for it. It merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes the sovereignty of God odious by representing it as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all its ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devotion to the Precious Blood.

The time is also one of libertinage; and a time of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical logic, one of infidelity. Whatever brings out God's side in creation, and magnifies his incessant supernatural operation in it, is the controversy which infidelity can least withstand. Now, the devotion to the Precious Blood does this in a very remarkable way. It shows that the true significance in every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, written in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 258-259.)

 

The influence of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry upon Catholics in a pluralistic society is most malignant, eating away most slowly at their sensus Catholicus to such an extent that those who insist upon Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order are seen as the problem as pluralism and religious indifferentism and various cultural trends (including those "fashions" that lead women into dressing more and more immodestly and to don masculine attire almost unthinkingly) that emanate from Protestants and Jews and Freemasons and other enemies of the Faith are accepted most sheepishly. Indeed, those who reject such influences are condemned as "unrealistic" or "idealistic."

5. Our Protestant and Judeo-Masonic system of civil governance and popular culture leads to the acceptance of an ever increasingly higher and higher dose of the so-called "lesser" evil:

The passive, uncritical acceptance of one evil after another as "normal" in a pluralistic society under the control of the influences of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry accustoms Catholics to accept more and more evils with equanimity, oblivious to the fact that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ suffered His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane as He saw how sin, the very antithesis of His Sacred Divinity, was to be promoted with such ease in the world and with such ready acceptance by so many of His own Catholic people.

Catholics are rushing to accept the pro-aborts John Sidney McCain III and Sarah Heath Palin even though they support the surgical killing of babies in some instances and the chemical assassination of babies in all instances. These are evils. These are grave evils. The fact that McCain and Palin support these--and many other evils--means next to nothing to most believing Catholics as they have come to accept as normal, if not actually irreversible, the extent of the evils that permeate our public policy and popular culture. Distracted by the apparent "greater evil," many Catholics minimize, sometimes to the point of being absolutely silent about, the grave evils supported by the naturalists of the false opposite of the "right."

This is, of course, the syndrome of boiling the frog alive very slowly in a pot as lukewarm water is heated gradually to the boiling point as his amphibious body adjusts to the changes in each elevate of the water's temperature. Catholics have been boiled alive by Protestantism, which is evil and thus of the devil, and Judeo-Masonry without even knowing it.

No one who supports a single, solitary abortion, whether chemical or surgical, is pro-life.

No one who supports the systematic destruction of the innocence of the young by means of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments is pro-family.

No one who supports the bombing of innocent civilians in a foreign country during an unjust, unprovoked invasion and occupation of that country is an agent of "peace."

No one who believes the diabolical lie of American "exceptionalism" is a friend of Christ the King, Whose true Faith is the foundation of social order, not American "exceptionalism."

How many Catholics have heard this from their pulpits? How many Catholics care about the grave, grave evils that have been promoted by the administration of George Walker Bush? All they care about, it appears, is that the "greater evils" were defeated in 2000 and 2004. They could care less about the evils that the man they enabled twice with their own votes has promoted, resenting it bitterly when the facts of these evils are presented to them in documented form. The messenger must be shot as an "idealist" as the hateful Protestant naturalism must be indemnified at every turn by silence from the pulpits of Catholic parishes across the ecclesiastical divide. Silence

6. Protestantism leads to a reliance upon the "written word" as the foundation of all human thought and action:

The diabolical lie of Protestantism is founded upon a rejection of the visible, hierarchical Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and upon the rejection of Sacred Tradition as a source of Divine Revelation. Protestants rely only on the "written word," that is Sacred Scripture, as the one and only source of Divine Revelation. Nothing that's not "written down" can be justified as having been revealed definitively by God.

Alas, these twin fundamental cornerstones of Protestant belief carry with them the seeds of Protestantism's self-destruction as it mutates endlessly into thousands of different sects and renders the Bible in a relativistic mush of contradictions. Rejecting Sacred Tradition and the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, Protestants rely upon "individual interpretation" of the Bible, which can result in only one thing: the continuous, uninterrupted deconstruction of the Bible by succeeding generations of Protestants. If there is no ultimate authority to guide men as to the meaning of the words in Sacred Scripture, you see, then there is no recourse when a "believer" puts a novel interpretation on a particular message. The "believer" can always say, "Who are you to tell me this passage means what you say it means. I am my own interpreter of the Bible, am I not?" This is the path to unbelief in Protestantism that played a very important part in paving the way also for the rise of Modernism in the Catholic Church.

A written constitution that admits of no higher authority than the text of its own words is as defenseless in the hands of "liberal, activist" judges as the Bible is in the hands of Protestants. Why should "liberal, activist" judges respect the words of the United States Constitution and/or the "intentions" of its framers when Protestants do not admit that there is an ultimate judge appointed by God, the Catholic Church, to teach us about the meaning of the words in Sacred Scripture. If one can interpret God's Holy Writ in novel ways with no one to intervene to put an end to such madness, then it is a relatively easy thing to deconstruct the plain meaning of the words of a written constitution, is it not? There is no way to stop the words of that "written constitution" from being used rather liberally to serve whatever naturalist purposes a contemporary "interpreter" desires them to serve.

Similarly, many Catholics, influenced by this aspect of Protestantism, want to take refuge in the "written word," looking for "proof" that a certain matter has been permitted or forbidden by the Church. Many were the times in my "conservative" Novus Ordo days when a concerned parishioner would ask me where they could "find" a written prohibition against a particular novelty, such as people, especially children, being invited to gather around the table at the "consecration" in the Protestant and Novus Ordo service.

Well, there is no written prohibition against this practice in the General Instruction to the Roman Missal. Catholics are supposed to know that such a thing is forbidden. It is part of our unwritten tradition. Such a thing would, of course, be impossible at the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Then again, as I realized only far too late, the Novus Ordo is nothing other than a celebration of the spirit of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry and is a revolution against the Catholic Faith, including Sacred Tradition. Trying to "fight" for a "sane" Novus Ordo is as impossible as trying to keep "liberal, activist" judges from "misinterpreting the United States Constitution. People keep trying, however. They keep trying.

The Protestant spirit of the "written word" influences Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide. Some say that "no pope ever condemned the American system," meaning that the "American system" has the full endorsement of the Catholic Church. This is not so. Pope after pope condemned the liberal spirit that was at the heart of the American founding and Pope Leo XIII specifically condemned the nature of Church-State relations in this country in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, which contained also an injunction by Pope Leo to the American bishops to teach his encyclical letters on the state that he knew were not being taught in this country. Pope Leo XIII also condemned the spirit of Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899, recognizing that that false spirit was leading Catholics here to view the Church through the eyes of pluralism and democracy and egalitarianism as they refused to view the world through the eyes of the true Faith:

But if this [the term Americanism] is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.

 

Some are taking refuge at this present time in the rather shallow assertion that we are free to vote in tomorrow's election since no pope has ever condemned voting in the United States of America even though there have been Masons here from the beginning. I, for one, have been most careful in my articles on this site, to point out the madness of the exercise of voting in this nation, leaving it to those who read this site to draw whatever conclusions they want on this matter. I have spelled out a defensible, Catholic case against voting in a system of naturalistic farce, and I stand by every word I wrote in When Lesser is Greater nearly ten months ago now. We must use our Catholic reason, as His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan explained in his superb sermon of yesterday, Sunday, November 2, 2008, “Faith Filled & Fearless”, to come to apply Catholic principles to the concrete circumstances in which we live, taking into account how evils have advanced by leaps and bounds in one "conservative" presidential administration after another.

Pope Pius IX, who was the Supreme Pontiff between 1846 and 1878, issued the following allocution in 1874, two years Hiram Ulysses Grant (who went by the name of Ulysses Simpson Grant) and Horace Greeley vied for the Presidency of the United States of America and two years before those great Catholic titans Rutherford Birchwood Hayes and Samuel Tilden vied for that same office:

To allow the masses, invariably uninformed and impulsive, to make decisions on the most serious matters, is this not to hand oneself over to chance and deliberately run towards the abyss? Yes, it would be more appropriate to call universal suffrage universal madness and, when the secret societies have taken control of it as is all too often the case, universal falsehood." (Pope Pius IX, Statement to French pilgrims, May 5, 1874, cited by Abbe Georges de Nantes, CCR # 333, p. 24.)

 

As I noted a week ago now in Making the Same Tragic Mistakes Again and Again, we are living in a world of naturalistic madness. The madness is such that some are trying to use various and sundry quotations from Pope Pius XII to attempt to impose a "moral obligation" upon Catholics to vote in tomorrow's election that features egregious naturalists who support one evil after another and who offend Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ very much thereby. Some have taken refuge in allocutions that Pope Pius XII gave to priests in Italy in 1946 and 1948, a time when Italy was faced with the prospect of an imminent takeover by the Communist Party at the ballot box in parliamentary elections, while others have taken refuge in an allocution that Pope Pius XII gave to the Delegates of the International Conference on Emigration, October 17, 1951:

It is a right and a duty to draw the attention of the faithful to draw the attention of the faithful to the extraordinary importance of elections and the moral responsibility which rests on everyone who has the right to vote. Without any doubt, the Church intends to remain outside and above political parties, but how can she remain indifferent to the composition of a Parliament when the Constitution give it power to pass laws which so directly affect the highest religious interests and even the condition of life of the Church herself?....

It is a strict duty for all who have the right, men or women, to take part in the elections. Whoever abstains, especially out of cowardice, commits a grave sin, a mortal fault.

Everyone has the right to vote according to the dictates of his own conscience. Now, it is evident that the voice of this conscience imposes upon every sincere Catholic the duty of giving his or her vote to candidates or those lists of candidates, who really offer sufficient assurances for safeguarding the rights of God and the souls of men, for the real good of individuals, families, and society, according to the law of God and moral Christian doctrine.

 

Please note the condition to the exercise of the franchise that is contained in the final paragraph of this quotation. The obligation to vote is conditioned on there being candidates who safeguard "the rights of God and the souls of men, for the good of individuals, families, and society, according to the law of God and moral Christian doctrine." I have made a more than defensible case that there are no such candidates running for the President of the United States of America and that there is thus no obligation to vote. Disagree with me? Peachy keen swell. John McCain and and Sarah Heath Palin support grave evils contrary to the rights of God and the souls of men, contrary to the law of God and Christian moral doctrine. I am not obligated under penalty of Mortal Sin to cast my vote for these products of the Protestant Revolution and Judeo-Masonry.

It is also interesting to point out that the text of the conditions attached in Pope Pius XII's 1951 allocution to the conference on emigration is almost identical to that used in his 1948 allocution to the priests of Rome:

In the present circumstances, it is a strict obligation for all those who have the right to vote, men and women, to take part in the elections. Whoever abstains from doing so, in particular by indolence or weakness, commits a sin grave in itself, a mortal fault. Each one must follow the dictate of his own conscience. However, it is obvious that the voice of conscience imposes on every Catholic to give his vote to the candidates who offer truly sufficient guarantees for the protection of the rights of God and of souls, for the true good of individuals, families and of society, according to the love of God and Catholic moral teaching.

 

These conditions must be applied by the use of our Catholic reason. And anyone who cannot see that evils have advanced by gigantic leaps and bounds in the past forty years as we have gone like lemmings to the polls to vote for naturalists who believe in and have acted upon their false, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian, Protestant and Judeo-Masonic beliefs is in the trapped in the insane asylum of naturalism that gave us such statist monsters enabled by the Catholic vote as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, and George Walker Bush. Aren't we supposed to learn from our mistakes? There is as little "fixing" the insanity of the American system as there is "fixing" the Novus Ordo or the apostasies of conciliarism by staying "within the structures and fighting for the Faith." (See: A World of Sisyphuses.)

Pope Pius XII also spoke about the matter of voting in similar terms in a 1947 allocution to the "women of today," an allocution in which he explained that mothers with children belong in the home, not in the realm of electoral politics:

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

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

 

Gee, we haven't seen that one quoted in too many parish bulletins lately, have we? Oh, my, to do that might dampen enthusiasm for the Catholic apostate, the Pentecostalist, the Zionist, the self-professed "feminist for life" who is "one hundred percent pro-contraception" and who supports the deliberate undermining of the innocence of our children by means of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, Sarah Heath Palin. Can't have that, can we?

How is it that we are obliged to "vote" without using our Catholic reason to enable the career of a woman who is in public life when she should be home with her children, which is a far more grave evil, my friends, and far more offensive to God than all of the evils that the Marxist Barack Hussein Obama will do to us if he winds up being sworn into office on January 20, 2009, as seems most likely today, November 3, 2008. Obama's evils are easy to see and to oppose. The evils posed the McCain-Palin ticket are more subtle, making them more dangerous, as anyone with an ounce of honesty can say has happened during the regime of statist and moral evils represented by President George Walker Bush and Vice President Richard N. Cheney.

We must use our Catholic reason to make moral judgments in accordance with Catholic truth. And an obligation to vote that is conditioned on there being candidates who support the teaching of the Church does not bind when there are no such candidates, a conclusion that I have demonstrated time and time again over the years.

What the late Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn wrote in his commence address at Harvard University on June 8, 1978, about the paralyzing influence of the legalism of Protestantism applies to those Catholics who are unwilling to take the time to study our situation and to think their way through to logical conclusions.

A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses.

 

To rely upon one part of papal allocutions without giving people the means to understand the conditions attached in another--and without providing them with the factual information necessary to determine whether those conditions are met at a particular time--paralyzes the sensus Catholicus and entraps Catholics further and further into the asylum of naturalism, in which rational, critical thought of the false foundations of the Modern state and how we are suffering from its consequences today and the hard work of research and study about our contemporary facts are forbidden. (Padre Pio, for example, did not need a passage in the 1917 Code of Canon Law to know that women were dressed immodestly! We must use our reason informed by the Catholic Faith, friends.)

I mean, how can Catholics who have not yet taken the time to study and to think their way through to the logical conclusions about our ecclesiastical situation be criticized when those Catholics who have come to such conclusions refuse to take the time to study the facts and to admit publicly that the likes of John McCain and Sarah Heath Palin are every bit as offensive to God and to the good of souls as the Marxist Obama and his Catholic reprobate running mate, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., that the devil wins no matter which set of naturalists is elected this year or in any other year for that matter. (And, just incidentally, you're not going to find much in the way of papal texts about sedevacantism after Pope Paul IV's Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio, February 15, 1559. One must use his Catholic reason to study and research the facts and the teachings.)

7. The influences of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry lead Catholics, steeped in the pragmatism of John Dewey, to reject as "unrealistic" and/or "idealistic" these simple reminders that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

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.)

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely wise, good, and just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men.  It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the states and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption.  It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, it makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which It has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes  It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty.  Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body.

This being said, what must be thought of the promiscuity in which young Catholics will be caught up with heterodox and unbelieving folk in a work of this nature? Is it not a thousand-fold more dangerous for them than a neutral association? What are we to think of this appeal to all the heterodox, and to all the unbelievers, to prove the excellence of their convictions in the social sphere in a sort of apologetic contest? Has not this contest lasted for nineteen centuries in conditions less dangerous for the faith of Catholics? And was it not all to the credit of the Catholic Church? What are we to think of this respect for all errors, and of this strange invitation made by a Catholic to all the dissidents to strengthen their convictions through study so that they may have more and more abundant sources of fresh forces? What are we to think of an association in which all religions and even Free-Thought may express themselves openly and in complete freedom? For the Sillonists who, in public lectures and elsewhere, proudly proclaim their personal faith, certainly do not intend to silence others nor do they intend to prevent a Protestant from asserting his Protestantism, and the skeptic from affirming his skepticism. Finally, what are we to think of a Catholic who, on entering his study group, leaves his Catholicism outside the door so as not to alarm his comrades who, “dreaming of disinterested social action, are not inclined to make it serve the triumph of interests, coteries and even convictions whatever they may be”? Such is the profession of faith of the New Democratic Committee for Social Action which has taken over the main objective of the previous organization and which, they say, “breaking the double meaning which surround the Greater Sillon both in reactionary and anti-clerical circles”, is now open to all men “who respect moral and religious forces and who are convinced that no genuine social emancipation is possible without the leaven of generous idealism.” (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Most Catholics do not want to be reminded of these truths. They strike out in anger against those of us who point them out, believing that "things" will be different "this" year or, just maybe, four years from now. We just have to leave our Catholicism "at the door" and continue to have our brains strait-jacketed into the diabolical trap of naturalism as we keep convincing ourselves that there is indeed something short of Catholicism by which order can be restored within our nation. To believe that, alas, is to believe in a lie, the lie of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, the lie of the pluralism of Americanism.

Barack Hussein Obama stands a decent chance of winning by a comfortable margin tomorrow. If he does so, good readers, blame the Protestant Revolt. Blame the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry. Blame the false premises of the American founding. Blame the counterfeit church of conciliarism's "reconciliation" with those false premises of Modernity. (See Apostasy Has Consequences.) Blame George Walker Bush and Richard N. Cheney for making Obama electable. Blame John Sidney McCain III for running an inept campaign that was pathetic even from the naturalistic perspective of electoral campaigning. Do not blame those of us who keep trying to remind you of root causes and of the fact that that there can be no personal or social order absent Catholicism. And if John Sidney McCain III does pull out an upset victory, which is still possible, this does not mean that a "miracle" has occurred or that we can go back to sleep for the next four years. The devil wins either way, which is the way it has been since the very beginning of the American system (see Dr. John C. Rao's Founding Fathers vs. Church Fathers: 666-0.)

We must indeed "keep it Catholic all of the time." All of the time. Without any exception at all. This won't win us elections and it won't win us friends (and it hasn't won some of us jobs in our chosen fields or much in the way of monetary support). We have no other choice. We must be faithful in a world of faithlessness as we try in our homes, enthroned as they must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, to make reparation for our own many sins and those of the whole world as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.

Today is the transferred Commemoration of All Souls, the members of the Church Suffering in Purgatory who rely upon our prayers and sacrifices, offered up to God through the Immaculate Heart of Mary (consecrated slaves surrender everything, including whatever merit their earn for their indulgenced actions, to Our Lady), to release them from the torments they suffer. May we be willing to offer up whatever sufferings and humiliations and difficulties that we may be asked to endure as a just compensation for our own sins as defenders of the Social Reign of Christ the King so that we can win friends for us in the Church Suffering who will help us to be released from the fires of Purgatory one day, please God we persist until the end in states of Sanctifying Grace.

Fear not the results tomorrow. Fear not the petty tyrants of naturalism, whether of the false opposite of the "left" or the false opposite of the "right." They will be footnotes in history soon enough.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has given us His Most Blessed Mother's Fatima Message. We know that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. We should take comfort always in this fact, resting assured that Our Lord Himself told us what to do in these days:

 

Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves. But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles: But when they shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.

The brother also shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and shall put them to death. And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake: but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved. And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall not finish all the cities of Israel, till the Son of man come. The disciple is not above the master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the goodman of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household?

Therefore fear them not. For nothing is covered that shall not be revealed: nor hid, that shall not be known. That which I tell you in the dark, speak ye in the light: and that which you hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops. And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows. Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

And as a man's enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me. (Matthew 10: 16-39.)

 

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

 

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.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?