Memo To the Midget Naturalists From Father Edward Leen

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The Iowa Caucuses are but fifteen days away. A small sample of American voters will turn out in various caucus meeting places to cast their open votes in a caucus meeting after representatives of candidates, if not the candidates themselves, speak to them beforehand.

I was one of Patrick Joseph Buchanan's surrogate speakers at Hempstead High School in Dubuque, Iowa, on Monday, February 12, 1996, having been sent there by Terry Jeffries, who was of Buchanan's campaign directors, after I had returned to Des Moines, Iowa, following a presentation to voters in Sioux City, Iowa, on Sunday, February 11, 1996. Mr. Jeffries said that he had gotten word that Ambassador Alan Keyes, who many of us believed was running to siphon votes away from Buchanan, hated as he was by the Republican establishment, was en route to Dubuque, a Buchanan stronghold, to speak personally at the caucuses there. Indeed, I passed the Class C motor home in which Keyes was riding while speaking on his cellular phone, probably being interviewed by a radio talk show host. I gave him a little wave as I scooted along my way along ice and snow packed Interstate 80 to get up to Dubuque in time for the caucuses.

This was all pretty heady stuff. It was, humanly speaking, rather exciting. I participated, however, because, despite my differences with Mr. Buchanan on his uncritical praise of the founding fathers who had a founding hatred for Christ the King, I believed that he was the only completely no-exceptions pro-life candidate who stood a reasonable chance of securing the Republican Party's 1996 presidential nomination and who would be able to debate incumbent President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton. I knew that the hapless, inarticulate, unprincipled thirty-third degree Mason named Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., would be the disaster that he proved himself to be in the debates against Clinton and Henry Ross Perot in the general election. As I told students of mine at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, New York, after Dole, whom President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., chose to replace Vice President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller on the 1976 Republican national ticket, performed miserably in his debate with James Earl Carter, Jr.'s running mate, United States Senator Walter F. Mondale (D-Minnesota), on October 15, 1976, "Mondale once lost a debate to a Eureka vacuum cleaner, and he mopped the floor with Dole last night. Mopped the floor with this hapless, stutterer. What a country."

Buchanan took 39.3% of the votes in Dubuque County and 41% of the vote in Woodbury County (where Sioux City is located), finishing second statewide to Dole with 23.3% of the caucus vote, three percentage points behind Dole (although many of us who worked on the campaign are convinced that not all of the Buchanan votes in Dubuque and Woodbury counties were reported accurately as there is a divergency between what we saw tallied with our own eyes that night and the final reported figures). Buchanan's momentum carried him to a victory over Bob Dole (who told his campaign staff to "win it ugly") in the New Hampshire primary eight days later, that is, on Tuesday, February 20, 1996. There had been a so-called "Christian Coalition" event in Derry, New Hampshire, on Friday, February 16, 1996, that featured each of the major candidates. I was in attendance that evening after having campaigned throughout the day in the Granite State, seeing a collection of political reporters (columnist Robert Novak, longtime WNBC-TV, Channel Four, New York, New York, newsman Gabe Pressman and, among others, Jeff Greenfield, then with ABC-TV News). Buchanan left another giving his victory speech with a Secret Service escort, the first time in the campaign that he had received such protection.

The excitement died down, however, four weeks later, that is, on "Super Tuesday II," March 12, 1996, as Dole, the supposedly "electable candidate," racked up victory after victory. Dole was so clueless, however, that he had the states he won had to be listed for him on individual pages in a loose leaf binder. One by one, therefore, Dole, whose right arm was badly injured and paralyzed during in April of 1945 near Bologna, Italy, during World War II, turned each page in the binder as he said, "Thank you, Illinois (pause to turn the page), "Thank you, Michigan" (pause to turn the page), "Thank you, Ohio" (pause to turn the page), "Thank you, Wisconsin." The man had to have the states he won printed out for him to read! This was the man touted as "electable" by the likes of "Father" Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and the smarmy little stooge of Pat Robertson by the name of Ralph Reed. They found out just how "electable" their hapless, inarticulate candidate was just a few months ago. What was a surprise to them was no surprise at all to anyone who actually knew anything about Dole's career, which was always defined by opportunism and a "down the middle," "let's make a deal" and "cut the differences in half" approach that reflected no convictions about anything as he held no real ideas of his own whatsoever. A man without ideas is incapable, therefore, of articulating that which he does not possess.

That was nearly sixteen years ago now. Statism continued on its steady march. Most Americans, including almost all Catholics no matter where they fall along the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide, refuse to see how statism continues to tighten its grip on us regardless of which of the two major organized crime families of naturalism controls the White House or the two houses of the United States Congress.

Statism was on the march in the administration of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. 

Statism was on the march in the administration of George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney.

Statism is on the march now in the administration of Barack Hussein Obama (aka Barry Soetero) and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Statism will be on the march no matter who is elected on November 6, 2012.

The march of statism is inexorable in any nation and each nation that rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by His Catholic Church.

No human document, including the Constitution of the United States of America that is premised upon the ability of men to pursue the common temporal good without regard to the Sacred Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication, and upon the belief that men can pursue "civic virtue" without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace, can retard the march of statism as human documents that do not recognize Christ the King become just a much a fungible plaything in the hands of mere mortals as have the Words of Sacred Scripture at the hands of Protestants and Modernist Catholics (see the appendix below for a summary of these facts that have been outlined on this site hundreds upon hundreds of times and are treated at some length in Volume I of Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics and Contributed to the Rise of Conciliarism).

Perhaps it might be wise to give the midget naturalists of the false opposite of the "right" who are marching all around the Hawkeye State of Iowa at the present time a memorandum from Father Edward Leen's book, The Holy Ghost (published in 1953 by Sheed and Ward), to explain that our own form of naturalism is just a different kind of expression in the penultimate naturalist ideology, Bolshevism, as the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity must wind produce a situation of total state control over men as there is no naturalist means on the face of this earth (no, not constitutions or laws or elections or this or that naturalist or secularist or nondenominational ideology or "philosophy) that can stop it. Here are Father Leen's words of wisdom:

A shudder of apprehension is traversing the world which still retains its loyalty to Jesus expressing Himself through the authority of His Church. That apprehension has not its sole cause the sight of the horrors that the world has witnessed in recent years in both hemispheres. Many Christians are beginning to feel that perhaps all may not be right with themselves. There is solid reason for this fear. The contemplation of the complete and reasoned abandonment of all hitherto accepted human values that has taken place in Russia and is taking place elsewhere, causes a good deal of anxious soul-searching. It is beginning to be dimly perceived that in social life, as it is lived, even in countries that have not as yet definitely broken with Christianity, there lie all the possibilities of what has become actual in Bolshevism. A considerable body of Christians, untrained in the Christian philosophy of life, are allowing themselves to absorb principles which undermine the constructions of Christian thought. They do not realise how much dangerous it is for Christianity to exist in an atmosphere of Naturalism than to be exposed to positive persecution. In the old days of the Roman Empire those who enrolled themselves under the standard of Christ saw, with logical clearness, that they had perforce to cut themselves adrift from the social life of the world in which they lived--from its tastes, practices and amusements. The line of demarcation between pagan and Christian life was sharp, clearly defined and obvious. Modern Christians have not been so favorably situated. As has been stated already, the framework of the Christian social organisation has as yet survived. This organisation is, to outward appearances, so solid and imposing that it is easy to be blind to the truth that the soul had gradually gone out of it. Under the shelter and utilising the resources of the organisation of life created by Christianity, customs, ways of conduct, habits of thought, have crept in, more completely perhaps, at variance with the spirit of Christianity than even the ways and manners of pagan Rome.

This infiltration of post-Christian paganism has been steady but slow, and at each stage is imperceptible. The Christian of to-day thinks that he is living in what is to all intents and purposes a Christian civilisation. Without misgivings he follows the current of social life around him. His amusements, his pleasures, his pursuits, his games, his books, his papers, his social and political ideas are of much the same kind as are those of the people with whom he mingles, and who may not have a vestige of a Christian principle left in their minds. He differs merely from them in that he holds to certain definite religious truths and clings to certain definite religious practices. But apart from this there is not any striking contrast in the outward conduct of life between Christian and non-Christian in what is called the civilised world. Catholics are amused by, and interested in, the very same things that appeal to those who have abandoned all belief in God. The result is a growing divorce between religion and life in the soul of the individual Christian. Little by little his faith ceases to be a determining effect on the bulk of his ideas, judgments and decisions that have relation to what he regards as his purely "secular" life. His physiognomy as a social being no longer bears trace of any formative effect of the beliefs he professes. And his faith rapidly becomes a thing of tradition and routine and not something which is looked to as a source of a life that is real.

The Bolshevist Revolution has had one good effect. It has awakened the averagely good Christian to the danger runs in allowing himself to drift with the current of social life about him. It has revealed to him the precipice towards which he has was heading by shaping his worldly career after principles the context of which the revolution has mercilessly exposed and revealed to be at variance with real Christianity. The sincerely religious--and there are many such still--are beginning to realise that if they are to live as Christians they must react violently against the milieu in which they live. It is beginning to be felt that one cannot be a true Christian and live as the bulk of men in civilised society are living. It is clearly seen that "life" is not to be found along those ways by which the vast majority of men are hurrying to disillusionment and despair. Up to the time of the recent cataclysm the average unreflecting Christian dwelt in the comfortable illusion that he could fall in with the ways of the world about him here, and, by holding on to the practices of religion, arrange matters satisfactorily for the hereafter. That illusion is dispelled. It is coming home to the discerning Christian that their religion is not a mere provision for the future. There is a growing conviction that it is only through Christianity lived integrally that the evils of the present time can be remedied and disaster in the time to come averted. (Father Edward Leen, The Holy Ghost, published in 1953 by Sheed and Ward, pp. 6-9.)

 

No, it's just crazy old Droleskey who writes these things. This much hated and reviled writer is only attempting to give voice, however poorly, to the simple Catholic truth summarized so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique on August 15, 1910:

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Father Edward Leen was simply giving expression in 1953 to simple, timeless and immutable truths that true pope after true pope had reiterated time and time again in the last three centuries now. No Catholicism, no social order. It's that simple. Why should we enable the midget naturalists by believing that they will give us anything other than naturalism. It is incomprehensible that Catholics who claim to be opposed to conciliarism, which is founded in no small measure in a blithe acceptance of the tenets of Modernity, remain as undiscerning now as Catholics were in the 1950s at the time of Father Leen.

 

We must be champions of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, champions of the Catholic Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal, champions of the truth that Catholicism is the and only foundation of personal and social order. Those who disagree do so at the peril to the nation they say they love but for which they have a false sense of nationalistic pride that impedes her conversion to the true Faith, which is what Our Lord Himself mandates for each nation on the face of this earth.

We must not be distracted by the side shows of naturalism or conciliarism. We must serve as champions of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, refusing to march along in the parade of the midget naturalists.

We can only stand tall, that is, to stand above the midgets of naturalism, if we stand uncompromisingly with Christ the King as the consecrated slaves of Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Our Lord was not born for us in Bethlehem to be King of our hearts alone. He was born for us to be King of all nations, including, yes, the United States of America, which is under a solemn obligation to recognize and obey her true Monarch, Christ the King, and the authority of her true Church lest her multiple sins and offenses bring her to the ruin of the Roman Empire itself.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

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.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix

Errors of the Midget Naturalists

1) It is impossible to fight naturalism with naturalism. The statism of the elitist named Barack Hussein Obama, who believes that he has a right to stifle dissent and to limit press "unfavorable" press coverage of his administration (see Dangerous Precedent for Press), is but the other side of the false opposite of naturalism that is the so-called "right" as it is impossible to retard the growth of the size, the scope and power of the civil state over the course of the long term by any means other than a due subordination of men and their nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by Holy Mother Church. No amount of advertence to "constitutional principles" will "save the day" as a written constitution that admits of no ultimate authority for its proper interpretation in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost in Heaven for all eternity, will be as utterly defenseless against positivists in the civil realm as the words of Holy Writ are in the hands of Protestants and modernist Catholics. We need Catholicism, my friends. We need the Social Reign of Christ the King.

2) None of the naturalists running for the Republican nomination understand the principal purpose of civil government. It is impossible to "restore" order in a society steeped in the madness of naturalism, emphasizing material well-being as the ultimate end of human existence without realizing that material prosperity is transitory and is only a by-product of right-living by citizens in conformity with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and of the pursuit of justice in the civil realm by public officials who are mindful that they must govern according to the Mind of Christ the King as He has discharged It exclusively in the Catholic Church.  Our popes have taught us this very clearly, teaching us that the only end result that can occur when Our Lord is not recognized as King is the pursuit of material well-being and that public life would be stained by crime:

 

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."

And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. 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. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

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. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

 

By the way, one of the correlative proofs of how the conciliar "popes" have defected from the Catholic Faith is that they have done what our true Roman Pontiffs have never ceased to do, to "refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. To refresh your memories on this point, please see Mocking Pope Saint Pius X and Our Lady of Fatima.

3) Each of the Republican naturalists aspiring to be our next caesar support one or more grave evils under cover of the civil law. Each supports contraception, thereby denying the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity marriage. All except Herman Cain, who has little chance of securing the Republican Party presidential nomination, support the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings in their mothers' wombs in some "exceptional" circumstances. One, Obama's former Ambassador to Red China, Jon Huntsman, Jr., supports "civil union" status for those engaged in perverted against in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. Two possible candidates, former New York Governor George Elmer Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudolph William Giuliani, are out-and-out pro-abort Catholics. Each of the presidential aspirants, save for United States Representative Ron Paul, is a bought-and-paid-for subsidiary of the Israeli lobby and are full-throated supporters of the fascism represented by the "Patriot Act" to fight the "Global War on Terror." None of them would understand that the legitimacy of their own candidacies is sunk by these words, written in the Sixteenth Century by Silvio Cardinal Antoniano and quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, because they believe in and support various evils that have caused the very social and economic disorder that they seek to redress by means of their candidacies:

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

 

4) Each of the Republican naturalists fails to recognize that they need to be openly devoted to and publicly reliant upon the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven and of earth, to advance the common temporal good in light of man's Last End. Orestes Brownson discussed this exact point in the middle of the Nineteenth Century:

I have spoken of the influence of devotion to Mary in elevating maternity and with it, womanhood. The nations are in need of this influence still. Christendom is lapsing anew into heathenism, and the abominations I have referred to as existing in heathen nations, are reviving in nations that profess to be Christian, and even to a lamentable extent in the bosom of nations that call themselves Catholic. Faith has become weak, charity has given way to a watery philanthropy, and the worship of Mary is branded as idolatry or as besottish superstition. Every thing is Profaned, the church, the state, God, man, and woman; and society, while boasting of its progress, seems to be rapidly lapsing into barbarism. Never did the nations more need the church, or the pastoral authority of the vicar of Christ; never was there a greater need of the prayers and intercession of her whom we invoke as Health of the Weak, Refuge of Sinners, Comforter of the Afflicted, and Help of Christians. No small part of the world, once Christian, and adoring the Cross, needs converting anew. The crescent profanes the sacred dome of Saint Sophia, and more than two-thirds of the population of the globe are infidels or pagans; while heresy, schism, incredulity, indifferentism, dishonor Christ and our Lady in fair lands that still retain the Christian name. The work of converting and purifying the world is not finished, and is apparently, to a great extent, to be done over again.

If there is any truth in the view I have presented of the moral and social influence of devotion to the virgin-mother of God, it is to that devotion, as a powerful means of reconverting and repurifying Christian nations, and of converting and purifying heathen nations, that we must have recourse. The enemy of man to be overcome, is the same old enemy of God. Man would be God, not in God's way, but in his own; he would stand on himself, and suffice for himself. In the pride of his strength, and the light of his own intellect, he refuses to bend to the Highest, and to learn of the Wisest, and his strength turns to weakness, his light to darkness, and his manhood disappears. He loses heart, and likens himself to a worm, and crouches, and grovels. What can restore him? Not to-day need we fear an excess of faith, an excess of devotion. The enemy is a cold, freezing rationalism, which, pretending to be reason, becomes lifeless materialism. Nothing can overcome him but devotion to her who, as the mother of God, was to crush the serpent's head. We must call on Mary to call on God with us, and for us, to help us as he did the first Christians.

In conclusion, I will say that efforts to increase devotion to the Blessed Virgin are, to me, among the most encouraging signs that God has not forgotten us; that there are still faith and love on the earth, and that there is still a recuperative principle in Christian society. I thank God, for society itself, that there are still those who delight to call themselves children of Mary, and to keep alive in our cold, heartless world, the memory of her virtues. While she is loved and reverenced there is hope for society, and most grateful am I to God that the hard reasonings of this reasonless age, and the chilling sneers of the proud, the conceited, the worldly, the corrupt, have not frightened all out of their deep, ardent, and simple devotion to her who is blessed among women. If I have not been able to speak fit words in honor of our Lady, as I fear I have not, let me at least avow that I honor and cherish, in my heart of hearts, an who honor her, and show their devotion to her, by imitating her virtues. They are the real philanthropists they are tile real moral, the true social reformers, and are doing more for society, for the progress of virtue, intelligence, wisdom, than all our statesmen and philosophers put together. They love and honor God, in loving and honoring his mother, and I love and honor them, and, all unworthy as I am, I pray them to have the charity to implore her to bestow on me a mother's blessing, and to obtain for me the grace, when my life's pilgrimage is ended, to behold the face of her divine Son, my Lord, and my God. (Orestes Brownson, Moral and Social Influence of Devotion to Mary.)

 

5) Whether of the "left" or of the "right," the men who govern us are Pelagians, people who think that human beings are more or less self-redemptive, that they can stir up the graces within themselves that are necessary to correct wrongs and to change course of history. Consider once again Father Frederick William Faber's explosion of this heresy:

 

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

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

Those who want to think that we will make "progress" in 2012 will do so they get all worked up about debt ceilings and Medicare reform and repealing ObamaCare and the state of the economy without for one moment recognizing that men must do penance for their own sins that have worsened the state of the world and made them sad in their own lives as they have become the mere creatures of the state more and and more. We are living in a time of major chastisement as the lords of conciliarism who present themselves as officials of the Catholic Church, who should be looked to by the powerful in the world for leadership are but laughing stocks who have enabled moral and civil crimes while they have committed crimes against God by means of blasphemous speech and the promotion of heretical doctrines, have played their their own insidious role in helping to reaffirm men and their nations that something short of Catholicism is "good enough" in the eyes of God to please Him. It is not.

Each of the naturalists running for the Republican Party presidential nomination in the year 2012 has this or that "plan" to improve the economy or to secure the nation or to reform this or that program. No one but one believes in the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church as each is a son or daughter of the rotten fruit of that Divine Plan's violent overthrow wrought by the Protestant Revolution and institutionalized by the forces of Judeo-Masonry that are committed to the elimination of the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, from public discourse as all manner of evils become accepted gradually over time as "regrettable realities" about which we can do very little. After all, we have to win an election. right? Things will get "better" after that. This is but sheer deception.

Men, whether acting individually or collectively, deceive themselves if they think that they can make the world a "better" place absent a profound devotion to Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary. Our Lady told us in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety-four years ago that we must pray the Rosary to console the good God and to make reparation for our sins as we pray for the conversion of poor sinners and for the faithful fulfillment of her Fatima Message. This is a work of the Mercy of the Divine Redeemer, Who is giving us every chance to repent and convert. Why do men still persist in their obstinate refusal to take Our Lady's Fatima Message seriously and to organize Rosary processions and rallies to counter the naturalism of the day and to serve as valiant champions of Christ the King?

Let me reiterate some passages that I wrote over seven months ago now:

The following words of Pope Pius XI, contained in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, are eternally true as it is impossible for the falsehoods of naturalism to do anything other than to worsen the situation of men and their nations:

Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. It was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

 

Error divides. Catholicism unites.

Protestantism has divided into a welter of warring, contradictory sects, numbering well over thirty-three thousand. Its errors have influenced the development and progression of conciliarism, which has seen a situation arise where the divisions between formerly Catholic parishes are so pronounced that many "conservative" and traditionally-minded Catholics attached to the conciliar structures go to great lengths to avoid the "ultra-progressive" revolutionaries who believe in a different faith than they do. Catholicism is supposed to speak with one voice, una voce, as it is the voice of Christ the King, Who has but one voice. It is no accident that our nation and the world is seeing more overt manifestations of evil and error when the lords of conciliarism have made their own "reconciliation" with the principles of Modernity, starting with religious liberty and separation of Church and State.

Error divides. Catholicism unites.

We are fighting the forces of darkness that can be defeated only if we base our efforts in the temporal realm upon a firm, unshakable and uncompromising commitment to the Social Reign of Christ the King and a tender reliance upon her Most Holy Rosary and fidelity to her Fatima Message. Anyone who believes in political ecumenism, mixing false religious beliefs with the tenets of the true Faith or with Freemasonry and outright atheism, has no business speaking to Catholics about "solutions" to the social problems that have been caused, proximately speaking, by the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry.

How can any Catholic not take seriously these words of Saint Augustine, quoted by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, concerning the fact that there must no place whatsoever for errors concerning First and Last Things in our lives?

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

 

Error kills the soul. Catholicism makes it possible for one to save his immortal soul.

 

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890, explained that there is a never a time when a Catholic can speak as a naturalist or as a political ecumenist. We must speak and think and act always as Catholics:

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae,  January 10, 1890.)

 

(This has been extracted from March of the Midget Naturalists.)