L'Osservatore Marxista

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The editor of L'Osservatore Romano, Gian Maria Vian, is intent upon "rehabilitating" any number of villainous figures who have propagated errors that are offensive in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity and harmful to the souls for whom the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. We have seen the pernicious likes of John Lennon, Oscar Wilde, John Calvin, Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, Barack Hussein Obama, and the fictional Harry Potter, among others, praised in the pages of the semi-official newspaper of the Vatican, soon to enter into its fifty-second year of conciliar captivity.

A recent article in L'Osservatore Romano, published while we were dealing with the as of yet ongoing problems caused by the damage to the undercarriage of our motor home by a blown tire, has offered a "reassessment" of a revolutionary named Karl Marx, adding to the rogues' gallery of criminals who have had their work "reassessed" under the editorship of Gian Maria Vian.

See for yourselves:

Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people”, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said yesterday that Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation” felt by the “large part of humanity” that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making.

Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.

“We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system,” Professor Sans wrote. “If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?”

With reassessments such as these it may be wondered which formerly unacceptable figure could be next. Last year the Vatican erected a statue of Galileo as a way of saying sorry for trying the astronomer in 1633 for his observation that the Earth moved around the Sun; in February a leading official declared Darwin’s theory of evolution compatible with the Christian faith, and in July L’Osservatore praised Oscar Wilde, the gay playwright, as “a man who behind a mask of amorality asked himself what was just and what was mistaken”.

Professor Sans argues that Marx’s intellectual legacy was marred by the misappropriation of his work by the communist regimes of the 20th century. “It is no exaggeration to say that nothing has damaged the interests of Marx the philosopher more than Marxism,” he said.

This overturns a century of Catholic hostility to his creed. Two years ago Benedict XVI singled out Marxism as one of the great scourges of the modern age. “The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit,” he told an audience in Brazil.

Then again the Pope has been busy reappraising modern capitalism. Benedict’s latest encyclical, Charity in Truth, offers a direct response to the recession, arguing that global capitalism has lost its way and that Church teachings can help to restore economic health by focusing on justice for the weak and closer regulation of the market.

His predecessor, John Paul II — who hated communism and as pontiff helped to bring it down in his native Poland — was keenly aware of the failings of the West and the effects of unbridled capitalism on post-communist societies.

Professor Sans’s view of Marx was not without criticism. He argued that Marx’s “materialist” view of history had wrongly reduced man to no more than a product of his material, economic and physical circumstances. He also said that after the fall of communism in 1989, few believed any more that private property was in itself wrong or unjust, and “given the experience of the past half century” no one believed that collectivisation of property was the answer.

Marx, who predicted that capitalism would be destroyed by its internal contradictions and be replaced by communism after a transitional period, was born in 1818 in Trier in Germany to Jewish parents. Although it was a majority Catholic town, his father, Heinrich, converted to Lutheran Protestantism to escape anti-Semitism.

Marx was baptised as a Christian but he remained an atheist all his life. He once observed that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Marx was expelled from several European countries for his radical espousal of a working-class revolution. He moved to London in May 1849 and lived there until his death in 1883.

Professor Sans’s article was first published in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit paper, which is vetted in advance by the Vatican Secretariat of State. The decision to republish it in the Vatican newspaper gives it added papal endorsement. (Vatican thumbs up for Karl Marx after Galileo, Darwin and Oscar Wilde.)

 

The effort on the part of Professor Georg Sans to "reassess" Karl Marx, is nothing other than reprehensible. No true Catholic pope would have ever permitted such a "reassessment" to be published in any Catholic newspaper or scholarly journal.

Although Karl Marx did identify some of the abuses associated with the unbridled capitalism that is the heritage of Protestantism, especially its Calvinist strain, he did not understand or accept the fact that those abuses were the direct result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and cemented in place by the variety of inter-related ideologies and philosophies of naturalism that can be, quite correctly, identified as part of the Judeo-Masonic ethos.

Marx, as a scion of Modernity who rejected the existence of God and thus the actual fact of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost, believed in a variety of false, naturalistic concepts that he contended would provide the foundation for the truly "just" society. As is the case with all naturalists, however, Karl Marx's false beliefs could result in only one thing: bad consequences, which are still multiplying in the world today as we see very clearly right here in the United States of America at the present time as a man who was trained by a Marxist named Frank Marshall Davis (Obama's Communist Mentor), Barack Hussein Obama, uses one "crisis" after another, whether real or manufactured, to increase the size, the power and the scope of the Federal government.

Karl Marx founded his false philosophy on a fundamental and profound hatred of God. He was more than an atheist. He was a primogenitor of modern anti-Theism, an ideology based on the hatred of God. This hatred of God is made manifest in the hatred of His rational creatures as violence is used on human beings whom Marx deemed to be "responsible" for various social ill in order to impose a utopian scheme for the cessation of all class warfare and the development of the classless, stateless society.

Marx's philosophy hinges on his version (dialectic materialism) of the Hegelian dialectic (the belief that history is a clash of competing ideas, starting with a thesis that contains within itself the seeds of its own internal contradiction, giving rise to an antithesis that then clashes with the thesis to produce a new idea, the synthesis), which promises to make man happy in this life as the alleged source of all human conflict--the unjust and inequitable distribution of wealth and property--is removed by the killing off of the capitalists and the forced redistribution of their wealth according to various slogans (including the following: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"). It is interesting that Professor Georg Sans omits any reference to Karl Marx's specific call for a "violent, bloody revolution" to expedite the "evolutionary" process of the dialectical principle that would result in the triumph of "Ideal Communism," which Marx believed was the highest stage of human development.

Marxism-Leninism of its very anti-Theistic nature denies that man has an immortal soul that is made in the image and likeness of God, which is why the ideology of evolutionism developed by Charles Darwin in the 1840s had such a influence on political ideologues such as Marx and, later, Vladimir Lenin and so many others.

The human being, according to Marx, is nothing more than a higher form of animal who could be satisfied if he is fed, clothed, and housed. Man's only happiness is to be found in this life as there is no eternal life with God in Heaven for the just and no eternal punishment for those in Hell for those who die in state of final impenitence. The Marxist dialectic contends that that ultimate stage of human "perfection" referred to just above, "Ideal Communism," will emerge when the wealth and property of all capitalists in the world has been distributed equitably, at which point all human conflict, including wars, will cease and the need for government will end. Marx himself contended that it is at this stage that "history" would "end" and "man" would "begin."

Karl Marx believed that the evolutionary development of man to the stage of Ideal Communism is inevitable. The evolutionary process can be retarded by the schemes of capitalists and other "reactionaries." It cannot, however, be stopped, Marxists contend. Indeed, violent means must be employed to expedite the evolutionary process. Men who do not believe they bear within themselves the Divine impress and that they will be held to account for how they have treated their fellow men according to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication believe that anyone who gets in the way of their plans is expendable. The history of the past ninety-two years since the Bolshevik Revolution, which began on October 23, 1917, proves this point most abundantly as one Marxist tyrant after another has used the brute force of the civil state to kill off close to two hundred million human beings (see the chart in Flying The Flag for the Commies).

Professor Georg Sans is either intellectually dishonest or a fraudulent scholar to contend that "others" have "misinterpreted" Karl Marx's bloody, anti-Theistic philosophy. Vladmir Lenin and Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro understood Karl Marx perfectly, and they implemented their own cruel revolutions in total fidelity to Karl Marx's personal call for the violent, bloody revolution to "expedite" the "evolutionary" process of their revolutionary leader, Karl Marx himself. The only one who has "misunderstood" Karl Marx is Professor Georg Sans.

Did Pope Pius XI "misunderstand" Marxism when he wrote the following in Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937:

But the law of nature and its Author cannot be flouted with impunity. Communism has not been able, and will not be able, to achieve its objectives even in the merely economic sphere. It is true that in Russia it has been a contributing factor in rousing men and materials from the inertia of centuries, and in obtaining by all manner of means, often without scruple, some measure of material success. Nevertheless We know from reliable and even very recent testimony that not even there, in spite of slavery imposed on millions of men, has Communism reached its promised goal. After all, even the sphere of economics needs some morality, some moral sense of responsibility, which can find no place in a system so thoroughly materialistic as Communism. Terrorism is the only possible substitute, and it is terrorism that reigns today in Russia, where former comrades in revolution are exterminating each other. Terrorism, having failed despite all to stem the tide of moral corruption, cannot even prevent the dissolution of society itself.

In making these observations it is no part of Our intention to condemn en masse the peoples of the Soviet Union. For them We cherish the warmest paternal affection. We are well aware that not a few of them groan beneath the yoke imposed on them by men who in very large part are strangers to the real interests of the country. We recognize that many others were deceived by fallacious hopes. We blame only the system, with its authors and abettors who considered Russia the best-prepared field for experimenting with a plan elaborated decades ago, and who from there continue to spread it from one end of the world to the other.

We have exposed the errors and the violent, deceptive tactics of bolshevistic and atheistic Communism. It is now time, Venerable Brethren, to contrast with it the true notion, already familiar to you, of the civitas humana or human society, as taught by reason and Revelation through the mouth of the Church, Magistra Gentium.

Above all other reality there exists one supreme Being: God, the omnipotent Creator of all things, the all-wise and just Judge of all men. This supreme reality, God, is the absolute condemnation of the impudent falsehoods of Communism. In truth, it is not because men believe in God that He exists; rather because He exists do all men whose eyes are not deliberately closed to the truth believe in Him and pray to Him.

In the Encyclical on Christian Education We explained the fundamental doctrine concerning man as it may be gathered from reason and Faith. Man has a spiritual and immortal soul. He is a person, marvelously endowed by his Creator with gifts of body and mind. He is a true "microcosm," as the ancients said, a world in miniature, with a value far surpassing that of the vast inanimate cosmos. God alone is his last end, in this life and the next. By sanctifying grace he is raised to the dignity of a son of God, and incorporated into the Kingdom of God in the Mystical Body of Christ. In consequence he has been endowed by God with many and varied prerogatives: the right to life, to bodily integrity, to the necessary means of existence; the right to tend toward his ultimate goal in the path marked out for him by God; the right of association and the right to possess and use property.

Just as matrimony and the right to its natural use are of divine origin, so likewise are the constitution and fundamental prerogatives of the family fixed and determined by the Creator. In the Encyclical on Christian Marriage and in Our other Encyclical on Education, cited above, we have treated these topics at considerable length.

But God has likewise destined man for civil society according to the dictates of his very nature. In the plan of the Creator, society is a natural means which man can and must use to reach his destined end. Society is for man and not vice versa. This must not be understood in the sense of liberalistic individualism, which subordinates society to the selfish use of the individual; but only in the sense that by means of an organic union with society and by mutual collaboration the attainment of earthly happiness is placed within the reach of all. In a further sense, it is society which affords the opportunities for the development of all the individual and social gifts bestowed on human nature. These natural gifts have a value surpassing the immediate interests of the moment, for in society they reflect the divine perfection, which would not be true were man to live alone. But on final analysis, even in this latter function, society is made for man, that he may recognize this reflection of God's perfection, and refer it in praise and adoration to the Creator. Only man, the human person, and not society in any form is endowed with reason and a morally free will.

Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted rights, the most important of which We have indicated above. Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible. It is therefore according to the dictates of reason that ultimately all material things should be ordained to man as a person, that through his mediation they may find their way to the Creator. In this wise we can apply to man, the human person, the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who writes to the Corinthians on the Christian economy of salvation: "All things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's." While Communism impoverishes human personality by inverting the terms of the relation of man to society, to what lofty heights is man not elevated by reason and Revelation.

 

Pope Pius XI understood Karl Marx and his hideous system called "Communism" perfectly, forbidding all association with and assistance to Communist regimes, something that the conciliar "popes," each of whom has made his own accommodations with Communism, starting with Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII's agreement with Soviet officials to prohibit any condemnation of Communism at the "Second" Vatican Council in exchange for the presence of "observers" from the heretical and schismatic Russian Orthodox Church that has been so responsible for spreading the errors of Russia that are on full display now in the United States of America and continuing right on through to the present day as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has sought to downplay "differences" with Communist authorities in Red China in order to make the state-sponsored "church" there part of his multi-layered counterfeit church of conciliarism (see Red China: Workshop for the New Ecclesiology), has violated. Indeed, the future antipope Paul VI, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, directly betrayed Catholic priests sent behind the Iron Curtain by Pope Pius XII, effectively sentencing these priests to death or imprisonment. The words of true popes mean nothing to the conciliar revolutionaries when they want to advance their own revolutionary agenda against the Catholic Faith. Nothing at all.

No conciliar official on the face of this earth has enough of the sensus Catholicus to understand that Calvinist capitalism and Marxian Communism are but two sides of the same naturalistic coin:

 

The thesis we have endeavoured to present in this essay is, that the two great dominating schools of modern economic thought have a common origin. The capitalist school, which, basing its position on the unfettered right of the individual to do what he will with his own, demands the restriction of government interference in economic and social affairs within the narrowest  possible limits, and the socialist school, which, basing its position on the complete subordination of the individual to society, demands the socialization of all the means of production, if not all of wealth, face each other today as the only two solutions of the social question; they are bitterly hostile towards each other, and mutually intolerant and each is at the same weakened and provoked by the other. In one respect, and in one respect only, are they identical--they can both be shown to be the result of the Protestant Reformation.

We have seen the direct connection which exists between these modern schools of economic thought and their common ancestor. Capitalism found its roots in the intensely individualistic spirit of Protestantism, in the spread of anti-authoritative ideas from the realm of religion into the realm of political and social thought, and, above all, in the distinctive Calvinist doctrine of a successful and prosperous career being the outward and visible sign by which the regenerated might be known. Socialism, on the other hand, derived encouragement from the violations of established and prescriptive rights of which the Reformation afforded so many examples, from the growth of heretical sects tainted with Communism, and from the overthrow of the orthodox doctrine on original sin, which opened the way to the idea of the perfectibility of man through institutions. But, apart from these direct influences, there were others, indirect, but equally important. Both these great schools of economic thought are characterized by exaggerations and excesses; the one lays too great stress on the importance of the individual, and other on the importance of the community; they are both departures, in opposite directions, from the correct mean of reconciliation and of individual liberty with social solidarity. These excesses and exaggerations are the result of the free play of private judgment unguided by authority, and could not have occurred if Europe had continued to recognize an infallible central authority in ethical affairs.

The science of economics is the science of men's relations with one another in the domain of acquiring and disposing of wealth, and is, therefore, like political science in another sphere, a branch of the science of ethics. In the Middle Ages, man's ethical conduct, like his religious conduct, was under the supervision and guidance of a single authority, which claimed at the same time the right to define and to enforce its teaching. The machinery for enforcing the observance of medieval ethical teaching was of a singularly effective kind; pressure was brought to bear upon the conscience of the individual through the medium of compulsory periodical consultations with a trained moral adviser, who was empowered to enforce obedience to his advice by the most potent spiritual sanctions. In this way, the whole conduct of man in relation to his neighbours was placed under the immediate guidance of the universally received ethical preceptor, and a common standard of action was ensured throughout the Christian world in the all the affairs of life. All economic transactions in particular were subject to the jealous scrutiny of the individual's spiritual director; and such matters as sales, loans, and so on, were considered reprehensible and punishable if not conducted in accordance with the Christian standards of commutative justice.

The whole of this elaborate system for the preservation of justice in the affairs of everyday life was shattered by the Reformation. The right of private judgment, which had first been asserted in matters of faith, rapidly spread into moral matters, and the attack on the dogmatic infallibility of the Church left Europe without an authority to which it could appeal on moral questions. The new Protestant churches were utterly unable to supply this want. The principle of private judgment on which they rested deprived them of any right to be listened to whenever they attempted to dictate moral precepts to their members, and henceforth the moral behaviour of the individual became a matter to be regulated by the promptings of his own conscience, or by such philosophical systems of ethics as he happened to approve. The secular state endeavoured to ensure that dishonesty amounting to actual theft or fraud should be kept in check, but this was a poor and ineffective substitute for the powerful weapon of the confessional. Authority having once broken down, it was but a single step from Protestantism to rationalism; and the way was opened to the development of all sorts of erroneous systems of morality. (George O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003)

The conciliarists who want to rehabilitate the likes of Charles Darwin and John Lennon and John Calvin and Barack Hussein Obama and Oscar Wilde and the fictional Harry Potter and Karl Marx live in a world of fantasy and delusion that has no correspondence with reality even on the natural level, to say nothing of the fact of having no correspondence to the truths of the Catholic Faith, which truths can be "reassessed" in light of the "historical circumstances" in which they were expressed by the Fathers of the Church's dogmatic councils and by her true popes. This all brings to mind once again the words of Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: "These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts."14 On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason";and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth." Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: "Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation". . . .

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten.

 

Yes, sure, of course. Professor Georg Sans does not speak in an official capacity for the counterfeit church of conciliarism. His article was, however, approved at the highest levels within the conciliar Vatican, having appeared in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica before being published in L'Osservatore Marxista, demonstrating yet again Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's very, very sanguine attitude about the nature of philosophical and theological errors (see also Si, Si, No, No article on Cardinal Ratzinger). This is absolute insanity as, to quote Pope Pius XI once again, the Catholic Church proposes a "complete and easily understood teaching," not an endless array of contradictions and reassessments and ambiguities that come from Hell itself.

We must be willing to suffer with joy and gladness and equanimity all of the sufferings and calumnies that come our way, perhaps even from those in our own families and those with whom we have been associated in the past. We must accept all manner of sufferings as the price of our own sins, considering it to be a great privilege to be castigated and scorned and misunderstood by anyone and everyone, starting with those who seek to defend the false "pontiff," Ratzinger/Benedict despite his many defections from the Catholic Faith and the many offenses he has given personally as Benedict XVI to the honor and majesty and glory of the Most Holy Trinity.

We must always remember these words of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori concerning the necessity of eschewing human respect in order to embrace the truths of the Faith and to defend what is right and just when it is being attacked by heretics, especially as the honor and glory and majesty of God are being profaned:

Be attentive. Brethren, if we wish to save our souls, we must overcome human respect, and bear the little confusion which may arise from the scoffs of the enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ. "For there is a shame that bringeth sin, and there is a shame that bringeth glory and grace"-Eccl., iv. 25. If we do not suffer this confusion with patience, it will lead us into the pit of sin; but, if we submit to it for God's sake, it will obtain for us the divine grace here, and great glory hereafter. "As," says St. Gregory, "bashfulness is laudable in evil, so it is reprehensible in good"--hom. x., in  Ezech.

But some of you will say: I attend to my own affairs; I wish to save my soul; why should I be persecuted? But there is no remedy; it is impossible to serve God, and not be persecuted. "The wicked loathe them that are in the right way"--Prov., xxix. 27. Sinners cannot bear the sight of the man who lives according to the Gospel, because his life is a continual censure on their disorderly conduct; and therefore they say: "Let us lie in wait for the just; because he is not for our turn, and he is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the law"--Wis., ii. 12. The proud man, who seeks revenge for every insult he receives, would wish that all should avenge the offences that may be offered to him. The avaricious, who grow rich by injustice, wish that all should imitate their fraudulent practices. The drunkard wishes to see others indulge like himself, in intoxication. The immoral, who boast of their impurities, and can scarcely utter a word which does not savour of  obscenity, desire that all should act and speak as they do; and those who do not imitate their conduct, they regard as mean, clownish, and intractable--as men without honour and without education. "They are of the world; therefore of the world they speak"--I. John., iv. 5. Worldlings can speak no other language than that of the world. Oh! how great is their poverty and blindness! Sin has blinded them, and therefore they speak profanely. "These things they thought, and were deceived; for their own malice blinded them"--Wis., ii, 21. . . .

Wicked friends come to you and say: "What extravagancies are those in which you indulge? Why do you not act like others? Say to them in answer: My conduct is not opposed to that of all men; there are others who lead a holy life. They are indeed few; but I will follow their example; for the Gospel says: "Many are called, but few are chosen"--Matt., xx. 16. "If", says St. John Climacus, "you wish to be saved with the few, live like the few". But, they will add, do you not see that all murmur against you. and condemn your manner of living? Let your answer be: It is enough for me, that God does not censure my conduct. Is it not better to obey God than to obey men? Such was the answer of St. Peter and St. John to the Jewish priests: "If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge yet"--Acts, iv. 19. If they ask you how you can bear an insult? or who, after submitting to it, can you appear among your equals? answer them by saying, that you are a Christian, and that it is enough for you to appear well in the eyes of God. Such should be your answer to all these satellites of Satan: you must despise all their maxims and reproaches. And when it is necessary to reprove those who make little of God's law, you must take courage and correct them publicly. "Then that sin, reprove before all"--I. Tim., v. 20. And when there is question of the divine honour, we should not be frightened by the dignity of the man who offends God; let us say to him openly: This is sinful; it cannot be done. Let us imitate the Baptist, who reproved King Herod for living his brother's wife and said to him: "It is not lawful for thee to have her"--Matt., xiv. 4. Men indeed shall regard us as fools, and turn us into derision; but, on the day of judgment they shall acknowledge that they have been foolish, and we have shall have the glory of being numbered among the saints. They shall say: "These are they whom we had some time in derision. . . . . We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honour. Behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints"--Wis., v. 3, 4, 5.  (Sixth Sunday After Easter: On Human Respect.)

 

This is the situation that God has known from all eternity would befall us in our own lives at this time of salvation history. The graces won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady are sufficient for us to prosper under the crosses, whether personal or social or ecclesiastical, that we are asked to bear now. Let us lift high the Cross in our lives, thankful for each and every cross that is sent our way, understanding that the all merciful Redeemer Who shed His Most Precious Blood to redeem us wants us to plant a few seeds for the restoration of His Social Reign on earth as the fruit of the Triumph of His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart. We must enfold ourselves in the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary with perfect confidence, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.

 

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Pope Saint Evaristus, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints