King George III Is Owed An Apology

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Very few people understand or accept the fact that the putative presidency of the Kenyan-born Barack Hussein Obama (aka Barry Sotero) is the direct, inevitable and inexorable result of the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of the American founding. Statism must be the "end game," if you will, of any state that is founded in the false belief that it is not necessary for men to organize themselves, both personally and socially, around the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Nations which reject the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by the Catholic Church must degenerate over the course of time into a situation whereby some form of tyranny, whether exercised by an oligarchic elite or as a result of cultural majoritarianism and legal positivism (the belief that the morality of human acts is determined solely by the legal status of those acts without regard for the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law), will become accepted as the means to provide social order.

Indeed, look at how many naturalists of the "conservative" bent accepted former President George Walker Bush's expansion of the size and the scope of the powers of the Federal government of the United States of America beyond anything that could have been imagined by the Masonically-inspired founders of this country, the men who had a founding hatred for Christ the King, but which was but an inevitable result of their, the founders', false belief that men could be virtuous by their own unaided powers without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace and their false belief that the institutional safeguards (Federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, bicameralism--a lower house with representation based upon population in the states and an upper house, elected until the Seventeenth Amendment by state legislatures, based on equal representation among the states) could provide a check against the rise of permanently-established majorities which could exercise a near-tyrannical control of the process of making public policy. Most, although not all, naturalists of the "conservative" bent went "baa, baa" as George Walker Bush paved for the way for the triumph of the penultimate statist, Barack Hussein Obama, by means of policies that surrendered national sovereignty to various international organizations while at the same time planting the seeds for the nationalization of large segments of the American economy. Bush the younger also used the tragic events of September 11, 2001, as the pretext for the "Patriot Act" and a number of other odious measures designed to "insure" "national security" at the price of legitimate personal liberties (see Selective Use of Executive Power, Y2K's Lesser Evil Has Brought Us Great Evils, Socialism, Straight From Your "Pro-Life" Conservative, A Really Invisible Hand, Madness Is Easy to Define and From Luther to Bush to Obama).

Naturalists of the "leftist" bent are accepting with great glee Barack Hussein Obama's extension of his predecessor's expansion of the powers and scope of the Federal government of the United States of America. The automobile industry has been nationalized. The banking industry has been nationalized. United States Homeland Security  Secretary Janet Napolitano issued a scathing report claiming that the nation is at risk from "threats" by "rightwing domestic terrorists" ( see All Hail! Caesar Obamus), a claim that was fueled by the murder of baby-killer George Tiller and the murder of a guard at the "Holocaust" Museum in Washington, District of Columbia (see Reichstag II and Intent on Controlling Mind and Body). Caesar Obamus is preparing Americans for a massive government takeover of a health-care system that is already possessed of a spirit of utilitarianism, doing away with the preborn and the disabled and the brain damaged (such as Terri Schiavo) and the elderly, that will only be augmented "health care 'reform'" legislation passes both Houses of Congress and is signed into law by our reigning tyrant and demigod.

This is not all, of course.

A bill passed by the United States House of Representatives, the Clean Energy and Security Act, authorizes "auditors" to enter into every American home to audit every aspect of the homeowners' lives to determine if there are areas whereby they can make "improvements" to their homes so as to "save" energy. A failure to provide entry to these "auditors" from Stalinist Central will face fines of $2000 each time the auditor is denied entry into a home by a homeowner. How many Americans will object to these intrusion into their lives? Not many.

Most Americans, content to chortle their beer and chow down on their burgers and hot dogs as they celebrate a notion of "liberty" that has always been an illusion, will say to the auditor, "Come on in, Mr. Auditor. Please tell me how I can 'improve' my life to make my house more 'green.'" These are, after all, the same people who say the following every day of their lives:

"Come on in, Mr. Devil. Take your place in my house. Make yourself right at home.

"I watch your television programming every night.

"Most of what I 'feel' about current events is shaped by your naturalists, whether of the false opposite of the 'left' or of the false opposite of 'right,' who blather at me on television and the radio.

"I waste my time watching competitive sports, which, of course, takes my time away from prayer and makes of my favorite team a secular 'religion' that demands my every attention.

"I dress immodestly and according to the latest fashions, and I just love listening to your 'music' as I plunge myself merrily into a culture that worships you at every turn. My speech? Well, it's just as you want it, Mr. Devil, a little profane and a little blasphemous now and again.

"I use contraception and I believe that it is permissible, at in some instances, perhaps 'just' the 'hard cases,' for a woman to kill her preborn baby under cover of the civil law.

"I give my children all of the material goodies that they want and I let them associate with whomever they want regardless of the threat that their friends pose to their own immortal souls.

"It's just great to live in a country where I am 'free' to sin all of the time without being reminded that I might lose my soul for all eternity by doing your bidding."

 

A country where Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not recognized as King must be in the service of the devil. There is no middle ground at all.

The late Louis-Edouard-François-Desiré Cardinal Pie, as can be see in this passage from Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers (which is available from Mr. Hugh Akins's Catholic Action Resource Center), explained in the most basic terms the simple truth that Americanists, including Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, reject so boldly:

"If Jesus Christ," proclaims Msgr. Pie in a magnificent pastoral instruction, "if Jesus Christ Who is our light whereby we are drawn out of the seat of darkness and from the shadow of death, and Who has given to the world the treasure of truth and grace, if He has not enriched the world, I mean to say the social and political world itself, from the great evils which prevail in the heart of paganism, then it is to say that the work of Jesus Christ is not a divine work. Even more so: if the Gospel which would save men is incapable of procuring the actual progress of peoples, if the revealed light which is profitable to individuals is detrimental to society at large, if the scepter of Christ, sweet and beneficial to souls, and perhaps to families, is harmful and unacceptable for cities and empires; in other words, if Jesus Christ to whom the Prophets had promised and to Whom His Father had given the nations as a heritage, is not able to exercise His authority over them for it would be to their detriment and temporal disadvantage, it would have to be concluded that Jesus Christ is not God".

"To say Jesus Christ is the God of individuals and of families, but not the God of peoples and of societies, is to say that He is not God. To say that Christianity is the law of individual man and is not the law of collective man, is to say that Christianity is not divine. To say that the Church is the judge of private morality, but has nothing "to do with public and political morality, is to say that the Church is not divine."

In fine, Cardinal Pie insists:

"Christianity would not be divine if it were to have existence within individuals but not with regard to societies."

Fr. de St. Just asks, in conclusion:

"Could it be proven in clearer terms that social atheism conduces to individualistic atheism?"

 

Thus it is that not many Americans will blanche at the following intrusive regulations that have nothing to do with the provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America but which the constitution is powerless to prevent as its words have no more meaning in the hands of statists and "activist" judges than the words of Sacred Scripture have in the hands of a Protestant or a Modernist or any other type of rationalist:

Although some will still not believe those findings, there is undoubtedly enough evidence to merit a discussion or debate. No debate ever took place and questioning the climate-change “science” is not tolerated well. In fact, The London Telegraph printed an article stating climate change denial should be considered a mental disorder. Al Gore commonly responds to the opposition with, “There are also people who believe the moon landing took place in a studio in Arizona too.” Therefore insinuating the skeptics and opposition are conspiracy theorists. No conspiracy theorists here AG, just conspiracy fact.

Home Audit: A Look into the Future

The bill states every home owner will receive an energy audit. What is a home energy audit? It is an intrusive visit made by the bureaucrats at the Home Energy Team or a similar group.  They will examine and report the way you live your life directly to RESNET (Residential Energy Services Network) . Light fixtures, socket types, spas, hot tubs, windows, appliances, walls and roofs will all be under review. Energy tests will be conducted throughout your house. At the end of the visit you will receive a report and a rating. The report will focus on the changes you need to make and the rating is called a HERS rating (Home Energy Rating System). RESNET will perform the audits through authorized contractors. RESNET has adopted the Mortgage Industry National Home Energy Rating Standards. The standards set the national procedures for home energy ratings.

According to RESNET, an audit consists of::

Comprehensive Home Energy Audit - A level of the RESNET Home Energy Audit process defined by this standard to include the evaluation, diagnosis and proposed treatment of an existing home. The Comprehensive Home Energy Audit may be based on a Home Performance Assessment (“Comprehensive Home Performance Energy Audit”) or Home Energy Rating (“Comprehensive HERS Audit”), in accordance with the criteria established by this Standard. A homeowner may elect to go through this process with or without a prior Home Energy Survey or Diagnostic Home Energy Survey. 

Here is an in-depth breakdown of the audit:  

704.1.2.3 The Home Energy Survey Professional shall request copies of utility bills or written permission to obtain the energy use information from the utility company, and use them to produce an estimate of generalized end-uses (base, heating, and cooling).

704.1.2.5. Minimum Procedures for an In-Home Energy Survey:

704.1.2.5.1.1 R-values of wall/ceiling/floor insulation.

704.1.2.5.1.2 Square footage and approximate age of home.

704.1.2.5.1.3 Type of windows: glazing type(s) and frame material(s).

704.1.2.5.1.4 Type, model number, and location of heating/cooling system(s).

704.1.2.5.1.5 Type of ductwork, location and R-value of duct insulation, and any indications of previous duct sealing.

704.1.2.5.1.6 Type of foundation is crawl, basement, or slab.

704.1.2.5.1.7 Checklist of common air-leakage sites indicating likely opportunities for leakage reduction.

704.1.2.5.1.8 Estimated age and efficiency of major appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines and dryers.

704.1.2.5.1.9 Number and type of hardwired light fixtures and screw-in bulbs importable lamps suitable for energy efficient re-lamping.

704.1.2.5.1.10 Visual indications of condensation.

704.1.2.5.1.11 Presence and location of exhaust fans, and determination of whether they are vented outdoors.

704.1.2.5.1.12 Number and type of water fixtures (e.g. faucets, showerheads).

704.1.2.5.1.13 Presence and type(s) of combustion equipment; identification of visually identifiable evidence of flame rollout, blocked chimney, and corroded or missing vent connector. 

There is no doubt homes need to be more efficient, however, this audit will drain the pockets of the unlucky people whose houses are older and/or cheaply made due to builder irresponsibility. Let’s say your builder used cheap windows, very little insulation or a high-water toilet, the cost of those upgrades will be in the thousands of dollars. By making the recommended changes, you will receive a tax credit for improvements made under the energy star program. Please note, most rebates are 30% of cost, maximum $1500. Good luck if your central air is deemed unacceptable.  After the upgrades are completed, you must have the auditors back out to your property for a final inspection. Early reports of denying audits carry a misdemeanor charge and a $2000 fine for each count.  The more you deny, the more you pay.

As mentioned before, we do need clean energy, less fossil fuel, more efficient homes and cars, but not this way.  Make no mistake, we do have real environmental crises; drugs in the water, cloning, species extinction, genocide and genetically modified food are all very real.  Let’s focus on those, before you focus on the kind of faucet I have in the bathroom. Recycle, walk, ride a bike from time-to-time, open your windows, tune-up your car and plant a garden, but please, stay out of my house! (Kansas-City-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m7d1-Clean-Energy-and-Security-Act-brings-auditors-into-your-home.)

 

King George III of the House of Hanover is owed an apology. He had nothing on the violation of legitimate personal liberties that has been wrought by the statists of the "left" and of the "right" who have expanded the size and the scope and the power of the Federal government (and of governments at the state and local levels as well) as the direct result of the fact that the men who founded this nation rejected the simple truth that each civil government in the world has the obligation to recognize the religion as it pursues the common temporal good in light of man's Last End and according to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as these have been entrusted to the teaching authority and guardianship of the Catholic Church. Statism must result whenever men believe that they provide a means of social order without adhering to this simple reiteration of Catholic Social Teaching provided by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

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.

 

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, explained that societies that look only to the Natural Law and no higher will degenerate into an abyss of lawlessness and public crime over the course of time:

We are indeed now very far removed in time from the first beginnings of Redemption; but what difference does this make when the benefits thereof are perennial and immortal? He who once hath restored human nature ruined by sin the same preserveth and will preserve it for ever. "He gave Himself a redemption for all" (1 Timothy ii., 6)."In Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Corinthians xv., 22). "And of His Kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i., 33). Hence by God's eternal decree the salvation of all men, both severally and collectively, depends upon Jesus Christ. Those who abandon Him become guilty by the very fact, in their blindness and folly, of their own ruin; whilst at the same time they do all that in them lies to bring about a violent reaction of mankind in the direction of that mass of evils and miseries from which the Redeemer in His mercy had freed them.

Those who go astray from the road wander far from the goal they aim at. Similarly, if the pure and true light of truth be rejected, men's minds must necessarily be darkened and their souls deceived by deplorably false ideas. What hope of salvation can they have who abandon the very principle and fountain of life? Christ alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John xiv., 6). If He be abandoned the three necessary conditions of salvation are removed.

It is surely unnecessary to prove, what experience constantly shows and what each individual feels in himself, even in the very midst of all temporal prosperity-that in God alone can the human will find absolute and perfect peace. God is the only end of man. All our life on earth is the truthful and exact image of a pilgrimage. Now Christ is the "Way," for we can never reach God, the supreme and ultimate good, by this toilsome and doubtful road of mortal life, except with Christ as our leader and guide. How so? Firstly and chiefly by His grace; but this would remain "void" in man if the precepts of His law were neglected. For, as was necessarily the case after Jesus Christ had won our salvation, He left behind Him His Law for the protection and welfare of the human race, under the guidance of which men, converted from evil life, might safely tend towards God. "Going, teach ye all nations . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew xxviii., 19-20). "Keep my commandments" john xiv., 15). Hence it will be understood that in the Christian religion the first and most necessary condition is docility to the precepts of Jesus Christ, absolute loyalty of will towards Him as Lord and King. A serious duty, and one which oftentimes calls for strenuous labour, earnest endeavour, and perseverance! For although by Our Redeemer's grace human nature hath been regenerated, still there remains in each individual a certain debility and tendency to evil. Various natural appetites attract man on one side and the other; the allurements of the material world impel his soul to follow after what is pleasant rather than the law of Christ. Still we must strive our best and resist our natural inclinations with all our strength "unto the obedience of Christ." For unless they obey reason they become our masters, and carrying the whole man away from Christ, make him their slave. "Men of corrupt mind, who have made shipwreck of the faith, cannot help being slaves. . . They are slaves to a threefold concupiscence: of will, of pride, or of outward show" (St. Augustine, De Vera Religione, 37). In this contest every man must be prepared to undergo hard ships and troubles for Christ's sake. It is difficult to reject what so powerfully entices and delights. It is hard and painful to despise the supposed goods of the senses and of fortune for the will and precepts of Christ our Lord. But the Christian is absolutely obliged to be firm, and patient in suffering, if he wish to lead a Christian life. Have we forgotten of what Body and of what Head we are the members? "Having joy set before Him, He endured the Cross," and He bade us deny ourselves. The very dignity of human nature depends upon this disposition of mind. For, as even the ancient Pagan philosophy perceived, to be master of oneself and to make the lower part of the soul, obey the superior part, is so far from being a weakness of will that it is really a noble power, in consonance with right reason and most worthy of a man. Moreover, to bear and to suffer is the ordinary condition of man. Man can no more create for himself a life free from suffering and filled with all happiness that he can abrogate the decrees of his Divine Maker, who has willed that the consequences of original sin should be perpetual. It is reasonable, therefore, not to expect an end to troubles in this world, but rather to steel one's soul to bear troubles, by which we are taught to look forward with certainty to supreme happiness. Christ has not promised eternal bliss in heaven to riches, nor to a life of ease, to honours or to power, but to longsuffering and to tears, to the love of justice and to cleanness of heart.

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. . . .

"This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

 

Behold the crimes of public life day, beginning with crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Over four thousand innocent preborn babies are butchered by surgical means under cover of the civil law in the "free" United States of America. Many thousands more are killed as a result of abortifacient contraceptives. Moreover, of course, souls are subjected to endless assaults from advertising, including unwanted circulars that arrive in our mail box and from the magazines that stare us in the face at supermarket checkout counters and from billboards that are blatant in the promotion of pornography in the name of the lie that is "free" speech.

Although it is certainly true that man's fallen human nature as a result of Original Sin and the after-effects of our own Actual Sins will create situations of disorder and chaos in our own souls and that of our nations until the end of time, it is also true that there is a difference between individuals struggling to overcome sinful temptations and/or extricating themselves from ingrained habits of sin and the cultural promotion and protection of sinful behavior under cover of the civil law. It is one thing to sin and to be sorry as one seeks out Absolution from a true bishop or a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is quite another to persist in sin unrepentantly, worse yet to promote it under cover of the civil law and in every aspect of popular culture, which is what is done in the "free" United States of America that places a premium on a false sense of human "liberty" that is divorced from the pursuit of man's Last End as a member of the Catholic Church.

 

Most Americans, including most Catholics up and down and all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide, do not realize that it absolutely impossible for there to be order in societies when so many souls, objectively speaking (leaving subjective judgment on the culpability of these souls to God alone), are steeped in the ravages of unrepentant Mortal Sin. The late Silvio Cardinal Antoniano explained that it is impossible to pursue the common temporal good when things that are repugnant to the peace and prosperity of eternity are promoted under cover of the civil law:

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.)

 

The United States of America is the country where I was born and it will be, most likely, the country where I will die. Its founding occurred within the Providence of God and has served as a salutary lesson as to what happens when men believe that they can govern themselves absent a due subordination to the Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls. To criticize the nature of the American founding and to point out how its false premises have led to our situation of social chaos today is not to "hate" one's country. True love of one's country, patria, wills her good, the ultimate expression of which is her conversion to the true Faith and her Catholicization in aspects of her public life and popular culture so that everything is done for the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity and for the good, both temporal and eternal, of the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every singe drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Pope Leo XIII reminded us in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890, that love of one's country is a duty of the Natural Law (and it is also an obligation of filial piety under the Fourth Commandment). Love of one's country, however, is not an empty sentimentality whereby its founding premises that are antithetical to the good of souls are lionized and those responsible for those false premises are "canonized" as secular saints. True love of one's country does not consider its public policy, whether domestic or international, to be received from the hand of God or that one's country has a "mission" to spread a particular form of government that is premised on defective views as to what constitutes true human liberty and upon the falsehood that is the separation of Church and State. We are called to love God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church, the Catholic Church, before we love our spouses and our children and our parents and our friends and our country:

It cannot be doubted that duties more numerous and of greater moment devolve on Catholics than upon such as are either not sufficiently enlightened in relation to the Catholic faith, or who are entirely unacquainted with its doctrines. Considering that forthwith upon salvation being brought out for mankind, Jesus Christ laid upon His Apostles the injunction to "preach the Gospel to every creature," He imposed, it is evident, upon all men the duty of learning thoroughly and believing what they were taught. This duty is intimately bound up with the gaining of eternal salvation: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be condemned." But the man who has embraced the Christian faith, as in duty bound, is by that very fact a subject of the Church as one of the children born of her, and becomes a member of that greatest and holiest body, which it is the special charge of the Roman Pontiff to rule with supreme power, under its invisible head, Jesus Christ .

Now, if the natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his native land, very much more is it the urgent duty of Christians to be ever quickened by like feelings toward the Church. For the Church is the holy City of the living God, born of God Himself, and by Him built up and established. Upon this earth, indeed, she accomplishes her pilgrimage, but by instructing and guiding men she summons them to eternal happiness. We are bound, then, to love dearly the country whence we have received the means of enjoyment this mortal life affords, but we have a much more urgent obligation to love, with ardent love, the Church to which we owe the life of the soul, a life that will endure forever. For fitting it is to prefer the good of the soul to the well-being of the body, inasmuch as duties toward God are of a far more hallowed character than those toward men.

Moreover, if we would judge aright, the supernatural love for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from the same eternal principle, since God Himself is their Author and originating Cause. Consequently, it follows that between the duties they respectively enjoin, neither can come into collision with the other. We can, certainly, and should love ourselves, bear ourselves kindly toward our fellow men, nourish affection for the State and the governing powers; but at the same time we can and must cherish toward the Church a feeling of filial piety, and love God with the deepest love of which we are capable. The order of precedence of these duties is, however, at times, either under stress of public calamities, or through the perverse will of men, inverted. For, instances occur where the State seems to require from men as subjects one thing, and religion, from men as Christians, quite another; and this in reality without any other ground, than that the rulers of the State either hold the sacred power of the Church of no account, or endeavor to subject it to their own will. Hence arises a conflict, and an occasion, through such conflict, of virtue being put to the proof. The two powers are confronted and urge their behests in a contrary sense; to obey both is wholly impossible. No man can serve two masters, for to please the one amounts to contemning the other.

As to which should be preferred no one ought to balance for an instant. It is a high crime indeed to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men, an act of consummate wickedness to break the laws of Jesus Christ, in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers, or, under pretext of keeping the civil law, to ignore the rights of the Church; "we ought to obey God rather than men." This answer, which of old Peter and the other Apostles were used to give the civil authorities who enjoined unrighteous things, we must, in like circumstances, give always and without hesitation. No better citizen is there, whether in time of peace or war, than the Christian who is mindful of his duty; but such a one should be ready to suffer all things, even death itself, rather than abandon the cause of God or of the Church. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

 

A Day of Reparation, Not of Celebration, which was posted two years ago today, attempted to make distinctions to help those who confusion nationalism (the deification of one's country and its myths) with true patriotism (similar points were made in a question and answer format in A Catechism of the Social Reign of Christ the King). Here are just a few of those distinctions:

 

One of the first distinctions that should be made on this day, the Fourth of July, is that it is likely the case that the abuses, no matter how exaggerated by the American colonists in favor of independence from the United Kingdom, associated with King George III would never have arisen if England had remained Catholic. The Kings of England would have continued to recognize the fact that they had to reign their subjects with a view to promoting all that redounded to their sanctification and salvation as members of the Catholic Church, understanding that Holy Mother Church possessed the right, exercised as an absolute last resort following the discharge of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, to intervene with them when the good of souls demands such an intervention.

We must keep very much in mind, therefore, that the very conditions that were used as the pretext for the "Declaration of Independence" might never have existed if England had remained Catholic. The devil wants men and their nations to assert their "independence" from the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised exclusively by the Catholic Church. Catholic England's break from the Faith under King Henry VIII--and his subsequent persecution and execution of Catholics who remained faithful to Rome as he confiscated the lands of monasteries and convents to distribute them amongst his political supporters, making them dependent upon the Protestant Revolt in England for their very property and wealth--was used by the devil so as to foment all manner of mischief in subsequent centuries, including the founding of the first secular, religiously indifferentist nation in the history of the world, the United States of America.

A second distinction that should be made on this day the Fourth of July, is that the thirteen English colonies in North America located up and down the Atlantic seaboard from what is now the State of Maine to the Georgia-Florida border were not bastions of Christianity. The true popes of the Catholic Church always used the word Christianity to refer to the true Faith, that is, Catholicism. Although adherents of individual Protestant sects may be Christians if they had been baptized validly, Protestantism in all of its mutant forms is heretical. "Christianity" must of its nature be free of heresy. Protestantism, therefore, is neither a means of personal salvation or of social order.

To wit, the grubby little Calvinists who founded the Plymouth Colony, which lasted between 1620 and 1691 before being subsumed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony, left England (and the Netherlands) in the hope of founding a settlement free of any taint of "impurity" in religion, that is, free of any taint of the remaining vestiges of Catholicism (hierarchy, sacramental system, veneration of the saints, including Our Lady, the sporadic, intermittent reliance upon an attenuated version of "Apostolic Tradition") found in the Anglican "Church." The Calvinists hated the Catholic Church and they loathed Catholics. Although they had great natural fortitude, to be sure, they believed quite resolutely that no man needed to follow the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church and that no man needed to be sanctified by the worthy reception of Holy Communion or that he had the obligation to worship God in the ineffable, august Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Such wretched beliefs are from Hell, not from God. Such people are to be pitied, not exalted as "role models' for the triumph of a notion of "civil liberty" that is indifferent, if not directly hostile, to the pursuit of man's Last End as a member of the Catholic Church.

This legacy of anti-Catholicism, which was strong in each of the thirteen colonies, would lead Protestant land-owners to subject the free Catholics of Acadia who were expelled from their homes by Governor Charles Lawrence in 1755 to slavery in many instances. It is indeed more than a little curious that few great "flag wavers" of the "American" way mention the fact that members of heretical sects enslaved Catholics whose families had been broken up by Charles Lawrence and sent hither and yon, including to the colonies in what became the United States of America. To recount this history accurately might interfere, I suppose, with the mythology of "decency" that is said to have characterized the people in the English colonies who believed that material success was a sign of divine election and that there could be no greater "tyranny" for man than to be "yoked" to the "dictates" of the priesthood.

A third distinction that should be made on this day, the Fourth of July, is that the Catholics who arrived in Maryland in 1634 being told by a Jesuit priest to "practice their Faith, but as quietly as possible." This started a "tradition," if you will, now of 373 years' vintage, of Catholics subordinating their Faith to the exigencies of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry and pluralism and religious indifferentism. Yes, the history of the Catholic Church in the United States of America is very complex, full of examples of bishops and priests who believed in the Faith but who were "ahead of their time," so to speak, concerning the heresy of "religious liberty" and the religiously indifferentist civil state and also full of examples of bishops and priests who defended the totality of the Faith with great distinction. The bottom line, however, is this: there is a difference between accommodating oneself to the particular realities of a given situation, such as those that existed in a world of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry and various "Enlightenment" philosophies in the Eighteenth Century, and refusing to seek the conversion of a nation to the true Faith.

A very clever trap had been set by the devil to lull Catholics to sleep in the former colonies of the United Kingdom that became the first thirteen states of the United States of America. The adversary raised up Protestants in Europe who attacked the Catholic Church and individual Catholics with a furious abandon, subjecting Catholics in England and Ireland to a particularly vicious persecution that killed thousands of thousands of them and deprived thousands more of their homes and their freedom. This made the tiny number of Catholics of English and Irish descent in the colonies and the original thirteen states "grateful" to the "nice" Protestants who left them alone, for the most part, that is, to practice their Faith privately. This "gratitude" was ingrained in the minds and hearts of Catholic immigrants to the United States of America in the Nineteenth Century, thus predisposing them to view the Church through the eyes of the world rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith.

Pope Leo XIII noted this in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae , January 22, 1899:

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state.

In the apostolic letters concerning the constitution of states, addressed by us to the bishops of the whole Church, we discussed this point at length; and there set forth the difference existing between the Church, which is a divine society, and all other social human organizations which depend simply on free will and choice of men.

It is well, then, to particularly direct attention to the opinion which serves as the argument in behalf of this greater liberty sought for and recommended to Catholics.

It is alleged that now the Vatican decree concerning the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff having been proclaimed that nothing further on that score can give any solicitude, and accordingly, since that has been safeguarded and put beyond question a wider and freer field both for thought and action lies open to each one. But such reasoning is evidently faulty, since, if we are to come to any conclusion from the infallible teaching authority of the Church, it should rather be that no one should wish to depart from it, and moreover that the minds of all being leavened and directed thereby, greater security from private error would be enjoyed by all. And further, those who avail themselves of such a way of reasoning seem to depart seriously from the over-ruling wisdom of the Most High-which wisdom, since it was pleased to set forth by most solemn decision the authority and supreme teaching rights of this Apostolic See-willed that decision precisely in order to safeguard the minds of the Church's children from the dangers of these present times.

These dangers, viz., the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world, have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church's teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty.

We, indeed, have no thought of rejecting everything that modern industry and study has produced; so far from it that we welcome to the patrimony of truth and to an ever-widening scope of public well-being whatsoever helps toward the progress of learning and virtue. Yet all this, to be of any solid benefit, nay, to have a real existence and growth, can only be on the condition of recognizing the wisdom and authority of the Church.

 

Pope Leo XIII "took off the gloves" in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, having praised what he could of various elements of the American founding, including the natural virtues of George Washington, in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, before making it clear in that encyclical letter that the American bishops were not doing what they could to Catholicize the nation, especially as pertains to making his own encyclical letters on Church-State relations known to the Catholics of the United States of America. Pope Leo wanted to make it abundantly clear in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae that some of the American bishops did indeed want to view the Deposit of Faith through the lens of the American Constitution as the prototype of a "future church" modeled along the lines of "democracy" and "collegiality" and "egalitarianism" and "ecumenism." This telling passage from Pope Leo's Apostolical Letter to the longtime Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, James Cardinal Gibbons, is a prophetic warning about the counterfeit church of conciliarism that would owe much of its origins to the heresy of Americanism:

For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive of and desire the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.

 

The Rhine flows into the Tiber. So does the Potomac. So does the Potomac. The "healthy secularity" and "religious liberty" of conciliarism owe much of their nefarious origin to the Seventeenth Century view that living "quietly" in a non-Catholic world was preferable to winning converts to the true Faith.

A fourth distinction that needs to be made on this day, the Fourth of July, concerns the displacement of the authority of the Catholic Church on matters pertaining to the right ordering of the civil state in accord with the pursuit of man's Last End with the "authority" of the founders of the United States of America in general and the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America in particular. Even Catholics, sad to say, look to the "authority" of the Declaration of Independence or to the "original intent" of the "framers" to judge various issues and to comment upon them publicly as though the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church is a complete and total irrelevancy. Dr. John C. Rao commented upon this at length in Founding Fathers vs. Church Fathers: 666-0. As noted in one of yesterday's commentaries, Pope Pius XII, reiterating what Pope Pius XI had written in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, noted that Catholics are not free to ignore the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church or to assert that her magisterial authority does not extend to the social and political sphere:

Assuming false and unjust premises, they are not afraid to take a position which would confine within a narrow scope the supreme teaching authority of the Church, claiming that there are certain questions -- such as those which concern social and economic matters -- in which Catholics may ignore the teachings and the directives of this Apostolic See.

This opinion -- it seems entirely unnecessary to demonstrate its existence -- is utterly false and full of error because, as We declared a few years ago to a special meeting of Our Venerable Brethren in the episcopacy:

"The power of the Church is in no sense limited to so-called 'strictly religious matters'; but the whole matter of the natural law, its institution, interpretation and application, in so far as the moral aspect is concerned, are within its power.

"By God's appointment the observance of the natural law concerns the way by which man must strive toward his supernatural end. The Church shows the way and is the guide and guardian of men with respect to their supernatural end." (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1896.)

 

Quite specifically, you see, a nation that is not founded on right principles must degenerate into the barbarism of our present era, having no immutable teaching authority to guide it, choosing to be "guided" by the demigods of national founding fathers and/or by the shifting winds of majoritarian sentiment at any particular point in time. Contradiction and instability are bound to result, as we can see with great clarity today. It is very much beside the point to argue that the "founders" would have opposed this or that social evil. They premised the entire fabric of national life under the Constitution upon the false belief that men could sort out their differences by means of a cumbersome process of negotiation and debate in the national legislative process, believing that there was no single belief that could unite men and guide them in the pursuit of the common good as the supreme and eternal good each man was kept in mind. There is no way, therefore, for naturalists to use a naturalist Constitution to defend against various evils. Evil must win when man does not subordinate himself to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church and when men do not have belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace.

 

Although the counterfeit church of conciliarism has made its "reconciliation" with the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of the American founding, we should mourn the fact that so few Catholics have taken heed of this prophetic warning given by Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895:

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.

 

King George III acted tyrannically as a result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King in England wrought by King Henry VIII in 1534. We are suffering from the tyranny of statism at the present time for the same reason, that is, because King Henry Tudor set the English-speaking world on the path to naturalism that leads ultimately to the triumph of statism when he had himself declared supreme head of the "church" in England. The modern "state" has become the true secular "church" from which one one may legitimately dissent because it is founded in a manifest rejection of the Sacred Rights of Christ the King, He who has made us truly free from the tyranny of sin and the power of eternal death by having offered Himself up once in time on the Holy Cross to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father in Spirit and in Truth in atonement for our sins, a propiatory offering that is re-presented in an unbloody manner every day when a true bishop or a true priest offers the unbloody re-presentation of that same Sacrifice of Calvary that is the Holy Mass.

Although, as I have written on many occasions, anyone who think that we are restoring "order" to the United States of American by means of a Judeo-Masonic farce of an electoral system that accustoms us to accept increasingly higher doses of the supposedly "lesser evil" with the passage of time, there are some very concrete things we can do is to manifest our love for our nation, starting by making reparation for its crimes against God and man, which is one of the themes established by His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan for the all-night First Friday/First Saturday Eucharistic Adoration at Saint Gertrude the Great Church, and to pray for her conversion to the true Faith.

This is why it is very important to keep up our participation in His Excellency Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna's Fifteen Saturdays' Rosary Crusade. Heaven awaits our prayers. What do we tarry?

Obviously, we must always keep in mind the simple fact that one of us is free from the guilt of sin, which is why we must be earnest about making reparation for them to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Mindful of our need to make reparation of our sins and relying ever more confidently upon the maternal intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Empress of the Americas, may we be emboldened to plant the seeds, starting with the enthronement of our own homes to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the conversion of each man and woman and child in this nation to the Catholic Faith, thereby ushering in a Christendom in that part of North America located between Canada and Mexico wherein the wonderful cry of the Cristeros, voiced so proudly by Father Miguel Augustin Pro, S.J., will be on the lips of all men at all times:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, 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.

Pope Saint Leo II, pray for us, pray for us.

All of the Holy Roman Pontiffs, 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 Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

See also: A Litany of Saints