by
Thomas A. Droleskey
"Pope" Benedict XVI has gone all atwitter over the raid on a conciliar "bishops'" conference in Mechelen, Belgium by police on Thursday, June 24, 2010.
The "bishops" were detained in the chancery office while the police conduct their search, removing files and computers in the process. The "bishops" had their cellular telephones confiscated during the search, apparently out of fear that they might use them to warn others or to complain about the search to representatives in secular media, being unaware that the residence of the ultra-progressive conciliarist, Godfried "Cardinal" Daneels, was being searched or that the body of two deceased "cardinals," including the notorious "charismatic" and archconciliar revolutionary who was one of the principal architects of what he himself called a "revolution" at the "Second" Vatican Council who was doing the direct bidding of "good" "Pope" John XXIII, Leo "Cardinal" Suenens, interred at the Cathedral of Mechelen, were to be exhumed and examined before being reinterred (Police detained members of the Belgian Bishops' Conference).
Andre-Joseph Leonard, the conciliar "archbishop" of Mechelen-Brussels (also referred to as Malines-Brussels), denounced the raid, which prompted an immediate denunciation from various conciliarists in the Vatican, including Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict's spokesflack, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J.. A strong note of protest was delivered to Belgium's ambassador to the Holy See. And Ratzinger/Benedict himself sent the following letter to and prompted the false "pontiff" to send him, Andre-Joseph Leonard, the following letter yesterday, Sunday, June 27, 2010, expressing his own outrage at what took place on Thursday, June 24, 2010:
At this sad time I wish to express my special closeness and solidarity to you, dear brother in the episcopate, and to all the bishops of the Church in Belgium, for the surprising and deplorable manner in which searches were carried out at the cathedral of Mechelen and at the site where the Belgian episcopate was gathered in a plenary assembly which, among other things, also intended to consider questions associated with the abuse of minors by members of the clergy. On a number of occasions I myself have highlighted how these serious matters should be dealt with by both civil law and canon law, while respecting the specific nature and autonomy of each. In this context, I trust that justice may run its course in order to guarantee the fundamental rights of persons and of institutions, at the same time respecting victims, showing unconditional recognition for those who undertake to collaborate, and rejecting everything that obscures the noble goal with which justice is assigned.
"While assuring you that I accompany the progress of your Church with my daily prayers, I willingly impart an affectionate apostolic blessing". (BENEDICT XVI'S SOLIDARITY WITH BISHOPS OF BELGIUM)
Although we know that Ratzinger/Benedict is not a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter and that his "bishops," save for most of those in the Eastern rites and for the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X who pray for him as the "pope" in the Canon of the Mass, are not true and and legitimate Successors of the Apostles, all but a infinitesimally minute number of people in the world, many of whom are making war upon each other on an unremitting basis, believe that Joseph Ratzinger is indeed Pope Benedict XVI and that the men serving in once Catholic chancery offices are indeed the officials of the Catholic Church. The investigators who raided the conciliar "bishops'" meeting in Mechelen, Belgium, on Thursday, June 24, 2010, believe that the men who were present as the raid took place are the legitimate representatives of the Catholic Church. Legitimate concerns of a respect for the integrity of what appears to be the Catholic Church cannot be dismissed without a consideration of the fact that it is the conciliarists themselves who have placed themselves in such legal jeopardy.
That is, many brave and courageous bishops have fought and even sacrificed their very lives to protect the legitimate liberties of Holy Mother Church. One of those who did so with unstinting valor was Saint Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until time of his murder in 1170. Perhaps a brief review of his courageous witness in behalf of legitimate rights and privileges of Holy Mother Church would be useful to provide to demonstrate that the civil state cannot tread upon or trample the rights of Holy Mother Church at will:
Saint Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in his own cathedral in 1170, had to fight for the liberties of the Church against King Henry II, intent on making the Church serve his own purposes, a foreshadowing of the evils of another King Henry some 460 years later. Saint Thomas a Becket, although a friend of King Henry Plantagenet, would not let human respect stand in the way of defending the absolute right of the Catholic Church to be free in matters of her internal governance from any interference by temporal officials. The king of a country had to be subordinate to the King of Kings Who was born for us in poverty and in anonymity in Bethlehem so as to be crucified as Our King of Love on Calvary. No amount of blandishments from even a close friend, whom he had served for a time as the Chancellor of the Realm, and no amount of punishments imposed on his own relatives could persuade Saint Thomas a Becket to disown the King of Kings in order to curry favor with a mere mortal whose own kingship was transitory and circumscribed in the exercise of its legitimate powers by the Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Catholic Church.
Saint Thomas a Becket was a humble man. He prayed day and night. He served the poor with selfless abandon. He preached the Gospel fearlessly in the midst of all of the threats that were being made against him and his relatives. He wore a hair-shirt to mortify his flesh. Nevertheless, he did not hesitate as Archbishop of Canterbury to resist his friend, King Henry II, in order to reclaim lands that belonged rightly to the Church and to oppose with great courage the imposition of unjust taxes upon her by the civil state. Moreover, Saint Thomas asserted the right of the Church to try clerics charged with civil crimes in ecclesiastical courts as opposed to their being tried in civil courts.
Unlike the "bishops" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the United States of America who have sought to shield priests guilty of perverted behavior from all real punishments, whether ecclesiastical or civil, Saint Thomas a Becket meant to deal severely with clerics adjudged guilty of having committed crimes. He was simply asserting the right of the Church and not the civil state to do so, recognizing that the civil state might abuse its prosecutorial power to trump up totally bogus charges against priests so as to extort silence from them in the pulpit about matters of civil governance contrary to the demands of objective justice and thus the good of souls. It was in no way the intention of Saint Thomas a Becket to do what Bernard "Cardinal" Law and Roger "Cardinal" Mahony and countless other conciliar "bishops" have done, that is, to protect perverted priests by transferring them to other assignments without either punishing them for their perversity or seeking their spiritual reform for having the predilection to engage in unnatural acts indicative of grave mental disorders. Saint Thomas a Becket was willing to be charged with a bogus charge of "contempt of court" rather than yield for one instant to King Henry II's demands to bring the Church in England to heel under his power.
For the good of the Church, however, and for the sake of civil peace Saint Thomas was willing to absent himself from Canterbury for a time in order to calm King Henry's anger and to foster the Church's liberties. It was the prayerful hope of Saint Thomas while he was in exile in France, chiefly under the protection of King Louis VII of France, that the rights of the Church to be free from any and all threats imposed by the civil state would be respected anew. Alas, he had to pay with his life for his defense of the liberties of Holy Mother Church against the unjust exercise of civil authority by a fellow Catholic, falling under the blows imposed upon his body during vespers on December 29, 1170, becoming a new kind of martyr: one killed by fellow Catholics who viewed an archbishop's loyalty to Christ the King as disloyalty to the civil state. Coming as it did during the Octave of Christmas 836 years ago, the martyrdom of Saint Thomas a Becket reminds us that there will be those from the household of the Faith itself--and not just from the world-at-large--who will tempt us even during the solemnities of the Church's liturgical year to surrender to the exigencies of the moment rather than to remain steadfast at all times and in all places to the fullness of the Catholic Faith without one moment's hesitation.
Saint Thomas a Becket's witness to the rights of God and His Holy Church against the unjust exercise of civil authority by a Catholic potentate was one of the first instances of Catholic Cains shedding the blood of Catholic Abels, following by ninety-one years the murder of Saint Stanislaus by King Boleslaus in Poland in the year 1079 A.D., and following within that same ninety years or so the plots of Emperor Henry IV against the rights of the Church during the reign of Pope Saint Gregory VII. Catholics were doing the bidding of the adversary by spilling the blood of their brother Catholics to advance the goals of the civil state over moral reform and the rights of God and His Holy Church.
The adversary, who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls and to do as much damage to the Church Militant on earth as possible before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Second Coming in glory at the end of time on the Last Day, had done likewise with many of the Prophets of the Old Testament, men who had dared to challenge the kings of Israel and Judah to reform their own lives and to govern according to God's laws rather than the dictates of their own disordered wills. It was to be expected, therefore, that some Catholic kings would lose sight of Whose Kingship they were meant to imitate. If King David, of whose royal house Our Lord was born, could arrange the murder of Uriah, the husband of his paramour, then it should not be too terribly surprising that men such as Saint Stanislaus and Saint Thomas a Becket would suffer at the hands of their own co-religionists, friends, and relatives for the sake of remaining steadfast to the Gospel of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the rights of Holy Mother Church. (A Martyr for the Church's Liberties.)
Alas, the situation in Belgium is a little different than the situations that obtained in the past. The lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have voluntarily surrendered the legitimate liberties of the Catholic Church in the name of a "healthy secularity" or a "healthy laicism" that has renounced, at least in the pastoral praxis of the conciliar "popes" themselves and the "official" documents that they have written and the "homilies" and allocutions that they have given ceaselessly, the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church that the civil state has the obligation to recognize her as the true religion and to accord her with the favor and protection of the public patronage. Having thus surrendered its exercise of the Social Reign of Christ the King and praised the "virtues" of a "rightly understood" concept of "separation of Church and State" that permit "religions" to combat secularism without any one religion demanding recognition in the civil law, the counterfeit church of conciliarism is defenseless to assert that the rights and privileges that applied in the Middle Ages and applied even until relatively recent times in those countries that had concordats with the Catholic Church apply now.
Live by separation of Church and State? Die by separation of Church and State.
Who is it who has praised the separation of Church and State in Portugal that was condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in
Iamdudum, May 24, 1911?
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:
From a wise vision of life and of the world, the just ordering of society follows. Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life. The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom. What matters is the value attributed to the problem of meaning and its implication in public life. By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church, to which the two concordats of 1940 and 2004 would give shape, in cultural settings and ecclesial perspectives profoundly marked by rapid change. For the most part, the sufferings caused by these transformations have been faced with courage. Living amid a plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks requires a journey to the core of one’s being and to the nucleus of Christianity so as to reinforce the quality of one’s witness to the point of sanctity, and to find mission paths that lead even to the radical choice of martyrdom. (Official Reception at Lisbon Portela International Airport, Tuesday, May 11, 2010.)
Well, behold your "new area of freedom," "Pope" Benedict XVI. It is really kind of difficult to criticize the Belgian authorities for acting as they did when Belgium has long been in the vanguard of European nations that thumbed their noses at the very same papal pronouncements he considers to have had some merit at the time as as "
a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations" that
have, "in the details of the determinations they contain," become "obsolete" because they have fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time" (cf.
Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete).
As my dear wife said yesterday, Monday, June 28, 2010, perhaps Ratzinger/Benedict will now start quoting those documents that he once mocked. Perhaps now he will see the wisdom and immutable truths contained in the words of Pope Saint Pius X's Iamdudum:
2. Whilst the new rulers of Portugal were affording such numerous and awful examples of the abuse of power, you know with what patience and moderation this Apostolic See has acted towards them. We thought that We ought most carefully to avoid any action that could even have the appearance of hostility to the Republic. For We clung to the hope that its rulers would one day take saner counsels and would at length repair, by some new agreement, the injuries inflicted on the Church. In this, however, We have been altogether disappointed, for they have now crowned their evil work by the promulgation of a vicious and pernicious Decree for the Separation of Church and State. But now the duty imposed upon Us by our Apostolic charge will not allow Us to remain passive and silent when so serious a wound has been inflicted upon the rights and dignity of the Catholic religion. Therefore do We now address you, Venerable Brethren, in this letter and denounce to all Christendom the heinousness of this deed.
3. At the outset, the absurd and monstrous character of the decree of which We speak is plain from the fact that it proclaims and enacts that the Republic shall have no religion, as if men individually and any association or nation did not depend upon Him who is the Maker and Preserver of all things; and then from the fact that it liberates Portugal from the observance of the Catholic religion, that religion, We say, which has ever been that nation's greatest safeguard and glory, and has been professed almost unanimously by its people. So let us take it that it has been their pleasure to sever that close alliance between Church and State, confirmed though it was by the solemn faith of treaties. Once this divorce was effected, it would at least have been logical to pay no further attention to the Church, and to leave her the enjoyment of the common liberty and rights which belong to every citizen and every respectable community of peoples. Quite otherwise, however, have things fallen out. This decree bears indeed the name of Separation, but it enacts in reality the reduction of the Church to utter want by the spoliation of her property, and to servitude to the State by oppression in all that touches her sacred power and spirit. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)
Live by separation of Church and State, "Pope" Benedict XVI, and you will die by the separation of Church and State.
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and his conciliar "bishops" have engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to protect known, proven perverts in the clergy who have abused children and adults, sometimes without discrimination, by moving them from parish to parish, diocese to diocese and from one country to another without informing the people that they were placing moral wolves to terrorize them as the conciliar "popes" and "bishops" were committing acts of doctrinal and liturgical terrorism as agents of the "Second" Vatican Council and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service.
God is just. He will not be mocked. He will not suffer His Sacred Deposit of Faith to be trampled upon forever by men who appear to be popes and bishops. God will not suffer His First and Second Commandments to be mocked and spat upon by one conciliar "pope" after another and by one conciliar "bishop" after another as praise is offered for the "values" of one false religion after another, frequently right in the midst of places of false worship that these apostates dare to call "sacred."
With no one in the secular or religious clergy, including those in the "Motu" communities who are so content with the ever-modernizing version of the "Latin Mass" that they offer or simulate as the "extraordinary form of the 'one' Roman Rite," in the conciliar structures speaking to denounce these gross, grievous, grave offenses to the honor and glory and majesty of the Most Blessed Trinity, it appears to me that God is choosing the secularists who believe in the religiously indifferent civil state as the means to chastise the conciliarists for their offenses against Sacred Truth and the Sacred Liturgy as well as to chastise them so as to impose upon them just civil punishments for the civil crimes they have committed in protecting perverted clergymen by various means, including sending them to different countries.
Numerous members of conciliar "hierarchy," particularly in the United States of America, have played the "shell game" with clergymen who have proven to have engaged in the perverse corruption of Catholics of all ages, especially the young. Corrupt clergymen have been moved out of dioceses in Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Poland, numerous places on the continent of Africa, Asia, and Australia. This means that there is indeed an conspiracy of international proportions that has sought to protect corrupt clergymen from criminal prosecution in their own countries while at the same time leaving the unsuspecting laity who are unfortunate enough to be attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism at risk of being preyed upon by these men. And it is the reality of that international conspiracy that some in the United States of America are seeking to litigate by having the Vatican's legal immunity as a sovereign state stripped insofar as determining its financial liability for the actions of a particular priest.
(The Supreme Court of the United States of America determined on Monday, June 28, 2010, that the litigation could proceed at the United States District Court level, a litigation I believe will be decided in favor of the Vatican as I do not see how the State of Vatican City does not have immunity as a sovereign state in the court of any country. The issue in this case is whether "Father" Andrew Roman, who was transferred from Ireland to the United States of America because of his perverted activity, can be "considered" an employee of the Vatican, thus possibly subjecting the Vatican to financial liability and the partial loss of immunity. I don't see how the "employee" argument can be made successfully. Time will tell.)
In light of this reality that only a fool can deny or to seek to minimize, the civil authorities in Belgium are indeed acting within the scope of their competency, especially lacking any concordat between Church and State that specifies how clerics accused of civil crimes will be investigated and prosecuted, to conduct a wide-ranging investigation that might require what appear to some to be draconian measures while doing so. The civil authorities, however, must at all times be mindful of the need to keep confidential the names of victims who were promised confidentiality by conciliar officials when appeared before them to explain the circumstances of their cases.
The conciliar officials have simply demonstrated themselves time and time again to be liars who deny and obfuscate the truth in these matters (as they do in many matters of Faith, Morals and Worship). Vatican officials have applauded conciliar officials who have refused to turn over clergymen to the civil authorities. There are more than sufficient grounds to conduct an investigation in a sudden manner as occurred five days ago in Belgium. Given the nature of the specificity of the search (the tombs of two conciliar "cardinals" and the offices of the Modernist Godfried Daneels), spelled out in the news report linked above, it appears as though the Belgian police investigators had a reason for conducting the investigation and searching as they did without tipping off the "bishops" beforehand.
Those members of the conciliar clergy who commit moral crimes against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments can be absolved of their sins if they can find a true priest one day to hear their confessions before they die (or if they make a perfect Act of Contrition). Those in authority in the conciliar church can decide what canonical penalties, if any, to impose on such men. It is also true, however, that those members of the clergy who commit crimes against the civil state owe a debt to society for their crimes as well as the debt that they owe God for their sins. A civil state that does not recognize the authority of the Catholic Church to impose penalties upon clerical malefactors in the name and for the good of the civil state is a civil state where the temporal authorities are free to treat what they think is the Catholic Church as they would treat any private institution whose officials are suspected of committing crimes, including the crime of obstructing the course of criminal justice.
Live by the separation of Church and State, "Pope Benedict XVI," and you and your false "bishops" will die by the clubs of your "healthy secularity" or "healthy laicism" as the concepts you extol are used to bludgeon you over the head by civil officials, some of whom are undoubtedly both anti-Catholic and anti-clerical (some might even be entirely Christophobic pagans), for the way in which you and your "bishops" have protected criminals and exposed souls to great moral perils so needlessly.
Yes, it may very well be true that part of the motivation, as I am sure that some defenders of all things Benedict and/or all things conciliar will doubtlessly assert, of the investigation in Belgium is to build a case that what appears to be the Catholic Church, the opponent of "women's reproductive rights" and "gay rights," is a criminal organization in se and must have its operations terminated and the doors of its institutions shuttered. If this turns out to be the case, and I am not dismissing this a a real possibility, mind you, then this will be, at least in my view, God's way of dealing with the false sacraments and the false doctrines and hideous, blasphemous pastoral practices in order to punish those responsible for such offenses and to prevent them from continuing. Others will, of course, see things much differently, believing that what might very well be founded in overt anti-Catholicism is an effort to attack the Catholic Church that is a sign of the "martyrdom" and the "suffering" of the "suffering pope" who is under "attack" from all sides. Those who would make that assertion are, to put things in a charitable, friendly, non-controversial, amiable, brotherly and not in the slightest ad hominem or adversarial manner, quite mistaken.
Although it may very well be that the deeper motivations of Belgian authorities rest in the country's long antipathy to the authority of the Catholic Church, which does enjoy certain privileges under Belgian law, it is a bit of the stretch to liken what happened last Thursday, June 24, 2010, to the tactics used by Communist thugs against the Church and her officials in one country after another following the Soviet occupation and effect control of the countries of Eastern Europe. The Communist authorities were naked in their hatred of God and Holy Mother Church. Their goals were clear: to use false charges of "subversion" to shut down their hated enemy. While there might be such a motivation at work in Belgium and in the secular media in general, the conciliarists are the ones who have handed them a just reason to investigate them and they have, as noted above, provided them the civil clubs as a result of their "reconciliation with the principles of the new era inaugurated in 1789."
There is quite an irony in all of this: God used the caesars of ancient Rome as the means of destroying themselves as the blood of the martyrs brought forth the rise of the Church from the catacombs and the flowering of Christendom over the course of the centuries. It is my judgment, and it is only that, a judgment, that God is using the caesars of the present time to attack the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church that they think is the Catholic Church as the means to bring to ruin that counterfeit church as to permit the rise and flowering of the Catholic Church once again as the Church Militant is restored as a result of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and is able to provide more of her children with the the sacraments to be fortified against the caesars of our own time. The conciliarists lose. So do the conciliarists. Our Lady has the final say. Never doubt this.
Perhaps Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who seems incapable of admitting that the concepts that he has championed for so long are in any way wrong as a matter of principle (as he admits only that some of them have yet to be properly "understood" and implemented), now has pause to consider the wisdom and the truth of these words from our true popes concerning the proper relationship between Church and State:
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 Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
By the way, I do think that you might just mildly interested and perhaps even a little amused (I do try to give my readers a chuckle now and again) that Pope Saint Pius X wrote this encyclical letter to condemn the very law of separation of Church and State in France was praised in the name of "Pope John Paul II" on February 12, 2005. You know me. I just thought you wanted to do this slightly interest fact.
Being too tired to write the following words anew, let me simply provide you with a few passages and quotations from a recent article.
Although the Catholic Church can adapt herself to any legitimate form of government, including the specific institutional arrangements found in the Constitution of the United States of America, and admitting as well that she will adapt herself to the concrete circumstances in which she finds herself to continue her work of teaching and preaching and sanctification, she does insist that the civil state recognize her as the true religion and that those in civil authority yield to her in matters pertaining to the good of souls. Pope after pope made this clear in encyclical letters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries that bind our consciences today just as much as when they were written (see The Binding Nature of Catholic Social Teaching), including Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII:
But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.
For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
55. The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852. (Condemned Proposition by Pope Pius IX in The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864.)
As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.
Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate. . . . To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error (Pope Leo XII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
The lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism accept none of this. Indeed, they reject all of it, opening themselves up, of course, to the mockery of the forces of the anti-Incarnational world of Modernity with which it desires so earnestly to enter into what is called "inter-cultural dialogue" that is premised upon not only not asserting the Sacred Rights of Christ the King over men and their nations but upon an abject denial that nations have any obligation whasoever to recognize the Catholic Church as the true religion and to accord her the favor and patronage of the civil laws.
One of the interesting things about the fact that this situation has developed in Belgium is that the great defender of the Social Reign of Christ the King,
Louis-Edouard-François-Desiré Cardinal Pie the Bishop of Poitiers from May 23, 1849, to May 18, 1880, condemned the American and Belgian systems in the following words (as found in a commentary Father de St. Just that is included in the book cited at the end of the passage):
"Accordingly, the Bishop of Poitiers had always fought against THE SEPARATION OF Church and State. Moreover, he opposed all separations, that of reason and faith, of nature and grace, of natural religion and revealed religion, the separation of the philosopher and the Christian, of private man and public man. He saw in all these [separations] a resurgence of Manichean dualism and he had fought all these with, the supreme argument, the law formed by Christ. Therefore, it is in all truth, writing to [Minister of the Interior] the Count of Presigny, that he could render this testimony:
'We have nothing in common with the theorists of disunion and opposition of two orders, temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural. We struggle, on the contrary, with all our strength against these doctrines of separation which is leading to the denial of religion itself and of revealed religion.'"
Fr. de St. Just returns at this point and introduces us to what is perhaps Msgr. Pie's strongest language, with regard to this entire subject:
"To this doctrine of the Church, which Msgr. Pie brought to the mind of the rulers of nations, the liberals would oppose acts favoring separation.
"Certain countries, Belgium and America, for example, haven't they proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and doesn't the Church enjoy a more complete liberty under such a system?"
Cardinal Pie responded firmly to this question:
'THE AMERICAN AND BELGIUM SYSTEM, this system of philosophical-political indifference, shall eternally be a bastard system" (pp. 122-124 in Fr. de St. Just's book) (Selected Writings of Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, Catholic Action Resource Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007, pp. 21-23.)
Behold your "more complete liberty" at work in Belgium now, "Pope" Benedict XVI. Behold it. It is everything you have prayed for without realizing the unintended consequences of false ideals that you wind up attack you and your false church and its false doctrines and its hideous, invalid liturgical rites.
Cardinal Pie condemned the very words used by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in Portugal. Ah, you don't remember? It's just above in this article. Remember when "Pope Benedict XVI" claimed that the "church" enjoyed greater "liberty" in Portugal than ever before. It's all been condemned by true popes and true bishops.
Father de St. Just noted that its both revolutionaries and liberals who brought forth legislative acts of separation of Church and State. Very funny that he should have written that as I found just yesterday, when finding the obituary of Leo "Cardinal" Suenens in The New York Times (there is a great deal of research that goes into articles such as this one that makes it possible to document various points made in their texts) that is appended below, that The New York Times got it absolutely correct with the following headline announcing the election of Giovanni "Cardinal" Montini as "Pope" Paul VI thirty-seven years ago (Friday, June 21, 1963):
CARDINAL MONTINI ELECTED POPE; LIBERAL, 65, WILL REIGN AS PAUL VI; LIKELY TO CONTINUE JOHN'S WORK; 5TH VOTE DECISIVE New Pontiff Gives His Blessing to Crowd-- Coronation June 30 262d on Papal Throne Acceptance at 11:15 A.M. NEW PONTIFF IS 65; NAMED IN 5TH VOTE He Is 262d to Reign and Will Be Crowned on June 30 --Throng Cheers Him Workmen, Children, Nuns Hush for Announcement (You probably won't be able to view this article unless you are willing to cough up $3.95 to sign up for it all on your own, and I'm not giving out my password, thank you very much.)
Interesting, wouldn't you say? The article itself was a pretty good assessment of Montini's revolutionary predilections that are manifesting themselves in all of their perverse majesty that this time.
Obviously, we must, as always, spend time in prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament and pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, using the shield of Our Lady's Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and the weapon of her Rosary to protect us from the contagion of apostasy and betrayal that is all around us. We must also, of course, make reparation for our own many sins by offering up all of our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices and humiliations and penances and mortifications and fastings to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
This will all pass. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest, and it will be a triumph beyond all telling.
As Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself said to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque:
"I will reign in spite of all who oppose Me." (quoted in: The Right Reverend Emile Bougaud. The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 1990, p. 361.)
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us, on this your feast day!
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.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saint Peter Canisius, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Appendix
Obituary of Leo "Cardinal" Suenens that attests to his pivotal role as a key conciliar revolutionary
Leo Joseph Cardinal Suenens, whose public and behind-the-scenes leadership at the Second Vatican Council made him a major architect of 20th-century Roman Catholicism, died yesterday in Brussels. He was 91.
Active to his last day, the retired Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and Primate of Belgium was planning to attend a symposium in his honor at John Carroll University in Cleveland at the end of this month.
Apart from Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Suenens would rank among the two or three most important leaders of the Council," said the Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, a professor of theology at Catholic University in Washington.
The landmark meetings of the world's Catholic bishops, held in four sessions from October 1962 to December 1965, authorized changes in the liturgy, including the use of local languages instead of Latin, expanded the role of lay people, endorsed religious liberty and promoted dialogue with other religious groups and revised the hostile stance that the church had taken toward modernity.
None of this might have been accomplished without the skillful intervention of Cardinal Suenens (pronounced SOO-nens) in the spring of 1962. Vatican II's preparatory commissions had produced dozens of proposed texts, many of them rigid and restrictive in tone, that promised either to bog down the bishops in details or put pressure on them to rubber-stamp the documents.
Cardinal Suenens sent Pope John XXIII a critique of these texts and earned his approval to prepare an alternative agenda for the Council, focusing on a handful of key questions and dividing the work into internal church reform on the one hand and the church's relations with the rest of the world on the other.
The Belgian Cardinal's presentation of this alternative approach during the Council's first session was a turning point in the bishops' deliberations. Pope John then appointed him to a new coordinating committee that reviewed all the preparatory material before the next session in 1963 and essentially set the agenda for the entire Council.
Pope Paul VI, who succeeded Pope John in June 1963, made Cardinal Suenens one of the four moderators of the Council who presided over it.
Among the causes the Cardinal advocated were modernization of the garb and life style of Catholic nuns, expansion of the laity's responsibilities, ordination of married men to serve as deacons, mandatory retirement for bishops and renewed ties with other branches of Christianity and with Judaism.
He called for the church to re-examine its condemnation of contraception, and when Pope Paul took the question out of the hands of the Council, he warned that the church must "not have another Galileo case." But the debate that he helped start ultimately ended with a reassertion of the existing condemnation by Pope Paul VI in 1968.
Later that year, in a book titled "Co-Responsibility in the Church," the Cardinal expressed concern that the Vatican was retreating from the Council's movement toward shared responsibility and greater lay participation.
In the spring of 1969, on the eve of a meeting of Europe's bishops, he gave interviews in the European press criticizing centralized governance of the church by the Vatican authorities and proposing reforms on issues ranging from the Vatican diplomatic corps to the way popes are elected.
In 1970 he renewed his criticism, insisting that the hierarchy should be free to debate opening the priesthood to married men. This time Pope Paul VI, without mentioning Cardinal Suenens, expressed "grieved astonishment" at those who criticized papal policies.
Despite his identification with liberalizing tendencies in the church, the Cardinal was also a defender of traditional veneration of the Virgin Mary and, above all, of the wave of charismatic or pentecostal Catholicism that surged in the late 1960's and 1970's. As a sympathetic liaison between it and the Pope, he helped contain any tendencies within it to splinter from the church.
Born on July 16, 1904, he was four when his father died. Although wealthy childless relatives wanted the young Leo Joseph to study economics and manage their fortune, he chose the priesthood instead. He obtained doctorates in theology and philosophy along with a degree in church law in Rome.
After a turn as a seminary professor, he became vice rector of Louvain University during World War II, sometimes circumventing and sometimes openly defying the directives of the German occupiers.
Made an auxiliary bishop after the war, he was named Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels in 1961 and a year later, was made a Cardinal. He retired in 1979. Reports about him almost always mention his wit and charm, which went with both an enthusiasm for soccer and an intellectual capacity that made him the author of more than a dozen books (Leo Joseph Cardinal Suenens, A Vatican II Leader, Dies at 91, May 7, 1996.)
