Making It Up As They Go Along

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Those who are ignorant of the simple truth that every moment of our lives is meant to be subordinated to God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church must perforce spend their lives awash in a sea of ignorance and confusion and contradiction. This is true even for highly intelligent and very well-read students of history who are steeped in naturalism and who thus do not see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith, being consigned to a never-ending attempt to "think" themselves out of difficult situations, if not attempt to provide some "cosmic" explanation for the human condition that has nothing at all to do with the fact that all of the problems in the world are caused by Original Sin and our own Actual Sins and that the only way to ameliorate those problems is by the daily conversion of individual souls in cooperation with the Sanctifying Graces won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

The late Richard Milhous Nixon, the thirty-seventh President of the United States of America and the only man to resign this nation's highest office, had a very good native intellect. He was an avid reader, although not of First of Last Things, sadly. He was, like each of his predecessors and each of his successors, lost in a sea of naturalism, making it all up as he went along, clueless about the fact that everything in life must be subordinated to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His true Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.

Nixon's utter ignorance of the Deposit of Faith--and the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law included therein--was on display throughout his career. His political and military decisions were crafted almost entirely by amorality (the belief that one must act regardless of the inherent morality or immorality of a proposed course of action as what "matters" is the result, in other words, the ends justify the means). Nixon's view of surgical baby-killing reflected this utter lack of grounding in any simple grasp of the nature of the Fifth Commandment's absolute probation against the direct, intentional killing of any innocent human life:

On Jan. 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But the next day, newly released tapes reveal, he privately expressed ambivalence.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.” (Nixon Comments Disclosed on Abortion and Watergate)

 

So much for Blessed Martin de Porres, whose father was a white Spaniard and his mother was a Negro from Lima, Peru. Nixon's stand was hideous and reprehensible. It would be interesting to hear how those who defend the nonexistent "right" of a woman to "choose" to kill her baby explain on what grounds they could deny a woman the "right" to kill her baby according to Nixon's racist standard. Are there "limits" to the "right to choose"?

As is the case with almost everyone else in public life in a country founded in false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles, Richard Nixon was making it all up as he went along, oblivious to the fact that a statement of his about abortion on April 3, 1971, made it appear as though he was opposed to abortion as a means of "population control" without mentioning his support of abortion for eugenic reasons. Nixon's stand was hideous and reprehensible. It would be interesting to hear how those who defend the nonexistent"right" of a woman to "choose" to kill her baby explain

HISTORICALLY, laws regulating abortion in the United States have been the province of States, not the Federal Government. That remains the situation today, as one State after another takes up this question, debates it, and decides it. That is where the decisions should be made.

Partly for that reason, I have directed that the policy on abortions at American military bases in the United States be made to correspond with the laws of the States where those bases are located. If the laws in a particular State restrict abortions, the rules at the military base hospitals are to correspond to that law.

The effect of this directive is to reverse service regulations issued last summer, which had liberalized the rules on abortions at military hospitals. The new ruling supersedes this--and has been put into effect by the Secretary of Defense.

But while this matter is being debated in State capitals and weighed by various courts, the country has a right to know my personal views.

From personal and religious beliefs I consider abortion an unacceptable form of population control. Further, unrestricted abortion policies, or abortion on demand, I cannot square with my personal belief in the sanctity of human life--including the life of the yet unborn. For, surely, the unborn have rights also, recognized in law, recognized even in principles expounded by the United Nations.

Ours is a nation with a Judeo-Christian heritage. It is also a nation with serious social problems--problems of malnutrition, of broken homes, of poverty, and of delinquency. But none of these problems justifies such a solution.

A good and generous people will not opt, in my view, for this kind of alternative to its social dilemmas. Rather, it will open its hearts and homes to the unwanted children of its own, as it has done for the unwanted millions of other lands. (Nixon Statement on Abortion, April 3, 1971.)

 

Such confusion, starting with the fact that there is no such thing as a "Judeo-Christian" heritage. Truth can never be mixed in with error. Catholicism is the sole means of personal and social order. Nothing else. Not Talmudic Judaism Not the thousands of permutations of Protestantism, each of which is founded on a rejection of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has revealed exclusively to His true Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

Then President Nixon told the nation in 1971 that he considered surgical baby-killing to be "an unacceptable form of population control" and that he opposed "abortion on demand" at the same time he permitted babies to be slaughtered by surgical means on the ground of American military bases in those states that permitted abortion-on-demand. Nixon was oblivious as to the simple truth that no human institution of civil governance has any authority to dispense with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law so as to permit any direct, intentional taking of an innocent human life from the first moment of conception through all subsequent stages until the day of natural death under cover of the civil law. Nixon was saying, in effect, "I am personally opposed to abortion-on-demand, but I will permit surgeons in the employ of the government of the United States of America on American military bases to kill babies in those states that permit abortion-on-demand. Perhaps Nixon was prophetically anticipating Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict's XVI logically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" that stands the the principle of non-contradiction on its head.

Richard Nixon, who, as will be noted below, accepted the abject moral evil of contraception in order to advance the goals of "population control," reiterated his confused views about abortion following the release of the report on population control that was issued by a commission headed by John D. Rockefeller III, the brother of the then Governor of the State of New York, the pro-abortion Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, and the father of the junior United States senator from West Virginia, John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV, that supported abortion-on-demand:

While I do not plan to comment extensively on the contents and recommendations of the report, I do feel that it is important that the public know my views on some of the issues raised.

In particular, I want to reaffirm and reemphasize that I do not support unrestricted abortion policies. As I stated on April 3, 1971, when I revised abortion policies in military hospitals, I consider abortion an unacceptable form of population control. In my judgment, unrestricted abortion policies would demean human life. I also want to make it clear that I do not support the unrestricted distribution of family planning services and devices to minors. Such measures would do nothing to preserve and strengthen close family relationships.

I have a basic faith that the American people themselves will make sound judgments regarding family size and frequency of births, judgments that are conducive both to the public interest and to personal family goals--and I believe in the right of married couples to make these judgments for themselves.

While disagreeing with the general thrust of some of the Commission's recommendations, I wish to extend my thanks to the members of the Commission for their work and for having assembled much valuable information.

The findings and conclusions of the Commission should be of great value in assisting governments at all levels to formulate policy. At the Federal level, through our recent reorganization of the Executive Office of the President, we have the means through the Domestic Council and the Office of Management and Budget to follow up on the Commission's report. The recommendations of the Commission will be taken into account as we formulate our national growth and population research policies, and our agency budgets through these processes for the years ahead.

Many of the questions raised by the report cannot be answered purely on the basis of fact, but rather involve moral judgments about which reasonable men will disagree. I hope that the discussions ahead will be informed ones, so that we all will be better able to face these questions relating to population in full knowledge of the consequences of our decisions. (Statement About the Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.)

 

The confusion inherent in this statement is as mind-boggling as anything contained in Ratzinger's Principles of Catholic Theology.

Nixon believed in "the right of married couples to make these judgments for themselves" when, of course, no human being has any right to use contraceptive pills or devices at any time for any reason as to do so is to violate the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage. Although most contraceptives abort and abort most of the time, contraception is in and of itself a violation of the immutable laws of God that bind the consciences of all human beings at all times in all places and under all circumstances without any exception, reservation or qualification whatsoever. One who supports "family planning" as a matter of principle does not believe in God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church and is thus incapable of serving as a agent in behalf of the common temporal good undertaken as it must be in light of man's Last End.

Moreover, "reasonable men" are not free to disagree about the binding nature of the immutable laws of God. Contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave until the General Resurrection on the Last Day must obey God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church. This is not  subject to debate or "legitimate" disagreement. Richard Nixon's belief that men could disagree about moral judgments concerning "population control" was very similar to the canards mouth by one of his successors as President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush, who said constantly in 1999 and 2000 during his campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination and in the general election against then Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., that abortion was "a difficult" issue about which "good people" may disagree legitimately. Wrong. No one has any "right" to "disagree" with the laws of their Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.

Other Republicans, most notably Nixon acolyte Robert Joseph Dole, Jr. and John Sidney McCain III among them, have mouthed the same inanity about the slaughter of innocent babes being a "difficult" issue about which people of "good will" could disagree legitimately. This is an approach taken by none other than Barack Hussein Obama, who said the following at the University of Notre Dame du Lac on Sunday, May 17, 2009:

After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn't change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that - when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do - that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.

So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women."

Understand - I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it - indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory - the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature. (Text of Obama Speech at the University of Notre Dame.)

 

There is no "common ground" between truth and error, between good and evil. The precepts of the Fifth Commandment make it clear that it is never permissible to directly intend to kill an innocent human being as the first end of a moral act.

An expectant mother has no "decision" to make when she discovers that she is carrying a child in her womb. She has a baby to nurture unto birth and then to bring to the Baptismal font to be made a spiritual child by adoption of the Most Blessed Trinity, Whose very inner life is flooded into that baby's soul as the Original Sin and that soul's captivity to the devil is flooded out of it. There is no "decision" to be made. There is no "choice" to be made. There is God's Holy Will to fulfill with love and with perfection, made possible by the supernatural helps won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into human hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of all Graces.

Although I have written (and taught) this repeatedly throughout the course of my professional life as a college professor and speaker and writer, let me reiterate this simple truth once again: Every abortion in an attack mystically on the preborn Baby Jesus in the person of an innocent preborn baby in his mother's womb. No one--and I mean no one--can say that he "loves" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and support as a matter of public law and/or participate in actively the act of dismembering  or burning or poisoning Him mystically in the persons of innocent preborn children by chemical or surgical means.

It is that simple. There is "common ground" to be found. There is only God's Law to be obeyed. Period.

Richard Nixon? William Jefferson Clinton? Robert Joseph Dole, Jr.? Ronald Wilson Reagan? George Herbert Walker Bush? James Earl Carter Jr.? Sarah Heath Palin? Richard N. Cheney? Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.? Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.? George Walker Bush? John Sidney McCain III.? Barack Hussein Obama? What difference does it make? Each of these naturalists have supported surgical abortion in at least some, if not all, circumstances. Each of these naturalists without exception supported the chemical assassinations of innocent preborn children in all circumstances without any exceptions whatsoever. The differences among naturalists are always matter of degrees as each naturalist rejects the simple truth that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

Richard Nixon certainly did not believe that Catholicism was the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Even though he wrote a letter, dated May 5, 1972, to Terence "Cardinal" O'Connor, then the conciliar archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, to state that he, President Nixon, supported efforts in the New York State Legislature (State Senate and State Assembly) to repeal the legislation, passed in 1970 by five votes in the State Senate on March 18, 1970, and by three votes in the State Assembly on April 9, 1970, that permitted unrestricted baby-killing through the end of the first trimester of pregnancy in the State of New York, Nixon's effort in this regard was calculated to curry favor with the Catholic vote in major Midwestern states and is belied by the the tenor of his conversation on January 23, 1973. 

Always driven by considerations of realpolitik, Nixon said publicly in 1992 that the Republican Party should distance itself from its stance against baby-killing as "moral issues" had no place in electoral politics. This prompted me to send a letter via facsimile transmission to the naturalist host of a nationally syndicated television show, some fellow named Limbaugh, that Nixon's refusal to adhere to moral truth in his presidency cost him his office. (The letter was read, without attribution save for a reference that it came from Sioux City, Iowa, which is where I was teaching at Morningside College a the time.) Although I did not realize at the time that electoral politics was a farce, I did recognize in 1992 that Richard Milhous Nixon, who I once supported with great enthusiasm as a fourth grader and later as a senior in high school, had no understanding of First and Last Things and that his desire to get "moral issues" out of politics was just indicative of his constant emphasis on "winning" for the sake of "winning," which is what helped to precipitate his fall from power in the first place.

Although Richard Milhous Nixon was opposed to surgical abortion as a means of "population control," he was very much in favor of "population control," an issue that came to the forefront of his administration within six months of his inauguration as President of the United States of America on January 20, 1969.

Nixon' sent a Special Message to Congress on the Problems of Population Growth, dated July 19, 1969, that contained the following passage that should send shivers up the spine of any believing Catholic who loves God as He has revealed Himself to men exclusively through the Catholic Church as a very clear indication of the extent to which the leaders of both organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America, have been committed to anti-life and anti-family policies that mock God and lead to social and international chaos:

It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition. I believe, therefore, that we should establish as a national goal the provision of adequate family planning services within the next five years to all those who want them but cannot afford them. This we have the capacity to do.

Clearly, in no circumstances will the activities associated with our pursuit of this goal be allowed to infringe upon the religious convictions or personal wishes and freedom of any individual, nor will they be allowed to impair the absolute right of all individuals to have such matters of conscience respected by public authorities.

In order to achieve this national goal, we will have to increase the amount we are spending on population and family planning. But success in this endeavor will not result from higher expenditures alone. Because the life circumstances and family planning wishes of those who receive services vary considerably, an effective program must be more flexible in its design than are many present efforts. In addition, programs should be better coordinated and more effectively administered. Under current legislation, a comprehensive State or local project must assemble a patchwork of funds from many different sources--a time-consuming and confusing process. Moreover, under existing legislation, requests for funds for family planning services must often compete with requests for other deserving health endeavors. (Special Message to Congress on the Problems of Population Growth.)

 

In other words, Nixon did not want the government to force religiously run institutions to adopt policies to their beliefs. He only wanted every American taxpayer, regardless of religious convictions, to fund the evil of "family planning."

Nixon's second Secretary of State, Dr. Heinz Alfred Kissinger, who served succeeded Secretary of State William Pierce Rogers on September 3, 1973, was a thorough supporter of abortion and contraception. Kissinger

Kissinger, a former aide to the arch supporter of contraception and abortion, the late adulterous former Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, and Nixon sought to issue a National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM-200) in 1974 which would have encouraging countries to impose a one-child-per family policy in order to receive American foreign aid. The Nixon Administration authorized the writing of National Security Study Memorandum 200 in 1974 that was designed to implement a variety of the “population control” measures that had been recommended by the Rockefeller Commission, a panel appointed by President Nixon in 1969 following his own Special Message to Congress on July 18, 1969, on the “necessity” of controlling population growth.

This particular Memorandum, which was the brainchild of Nixon and Henry Kissinger and presidential counselor Donald D. Rumsfeld, included such draconian measures as encouraging countries to develop a one child per family policy and to regulate the control of food to developing nations. As a result of pressure brought by several Catholic cardinals in the United States, this NSSM was classified until 1989, at which point its terms were released.

It still amazes me, my friends, that the Nixon administration, whose officials believed in the abject immorality of the whole panoply of “population control” measures recommended in NSSM 200, including encouraging parents to have “one child per family,” can be praised and defended by any Catholic to this very day? Have we no love for God? Have we no regard for the horror of sin and  how it is an evil thing to promote sin under cover of law?

Naturalists always make it up as they go along. Despite their differences on various matters, including the nature and extent of the statism they support, each believes that it is possible for men to organize themselves personally and socially without reference to the Catholic Faith. This is a lie, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. 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.

 

The modern civil state is founded on one naturalist lie after another. The counterfeit church of conciliarism has made its "reconciliation" with these lies. We cannot do so. We cannot enable men in the civil state or in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who make things up as they go along. We must adhere to the totality of the Catholic Faith as It has been passed down to us through centuries under the infallible guidance and protection of God the Holy Ghost without any taint of compromise with the lords of Modernity or Modernism.

We begin Bishop McKenna's Rosary Crusade tomorrow, Saturday, June 27, 2009. We show our true love for our nation by praying for her ultimate good, that is, her conversion to the true Faith and thus the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen as we pray at the same time for the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and the vanquishing of conciliarism once and for all.

To this end, of course, we need to make reparation for our sins as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, conscious of the fact that our sins, each and every single one of them, has worsened the state of the Church and of the world. We don't "make up" moral truth as we go along in life. We can, however, make up for our sins as we attempt to let the Immaculate Heart of Mary lead us to the abode of the tender mercies of the Heart formed therefrom, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saints John and Paul, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?