Mocking Christ The King Anew In Holy Week

by Thomas A. Droleskey

And Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying: Art thou the king of the Jews? Jesus saith to him: Thou sayest it. And when he was accused by the chief priests and ancients, he answered nothing. Then Pilate saith to him: Dost not thou hear how great testimonies they allege against thee? And he answered him to never a word; so that the governor wondered exceedingly. Now upon the solemn day the governor was accustomed to release to the people one prisoner, whom they would.

And he had then a notorious prisoner, that was called Barabbas. They therefore being gathered together, Pilate said: Whom will you that I release to you, Barabbas, or Jesus that is called Christ? For he knew that for envy they had delivered him. And as he was sitting in the place of judgment, his wife sent to him, saying: Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. But the chief priests and ancients persuaded the people, that they should ask for Barabbas, and take Jesus away.

And the governor answering, said to them: Whether will you of the two to be released unto you? But they said, Barabbas. Pilate saith to them: What shall I do then with Jesus that is called Christ? They say all: Let him be crucified. The governor said to them: Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying: Let him be crucified. And Pilate seeing that he prevailed nothing, but that rather a tumult was made; taking water washed his hands before the people, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it. And the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon us and our children.

Then he released to them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him unto them to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor taking Jesus into the hall, gathered together unto him the whole band; And stripping him, they put a scarlet cloak about him. And platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And bowing the knee before him, they mocked him, saying: Hail, king of the Jews. And spitting upon him, they took the reed, and struck his head.

And after they had mocked him, they took off the cloak from him, and put on him his own garments, and led him away to crucify him. And going out, they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon: him they forced to take up his cross. And they came to the place that is called Golgotha, which is the place of Calvary. And they gave him wine to drink mingled with gall. And when he had tasted, he would not drink. And after they had crucified him, they divided his garments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: They divided my garments among them; and upon my vesture they cast lots. (Matthew 27: 11-15.)

 

Most sadly, the Roman soldiers who mocked Christ the King, Who was their own very King and that of their empire's, have much company today. Indeed, each of us mocks Christ the King when we sin by pride, when we make ourselves the arbiters of moral right and moral wrong, when we think that we do not need the graces that He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, to grow in virtue in this life and to persevere at all times in a state of Sanctifying Grace so as to be ready to meet Him as Our Divine Judge after we have died.

The anti-Incarnational world of Modernity has long mocked Christ the King, doing so as early as the hideous Martin Luther himself, whose bloody revolution against the Divine Plan that He instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church is the proximate source of our social problems today, including the rise of the monster civil state that is the devil's perverse replacement His Social Kingship over men and their nations:

The rending of the Mystical Body by the so-called Reformation movement has resulted in the pendulum swinging from the extreme error of Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism to the opposite extreme error of the Judaeo-Masonic-Communism of Karl Marx.

The uprise of individualism rapidly led to unbridled self-seeking. Law-makers who were arbiters of morality, as heads of the Churches, did not hesitate to favour their own enterprising spirit. The nobles and rich merchants in England, for example, who got possession of the monastery lands, which had maintained the poor, voted the poor laws in order to make the poor a charge on the nation at large. The enclosure of common lands in England and the development of the industrial system are a proof of what private judgment can do when transplanted into the realm of production and distribution. The Lutheran separation of Church from the Ruler and the Citizen shows the decay in the true idea of membership of our Lord's Mystical Body.

"Assuredly," said Luther, "a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion." (As quoted in Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

 

Modernism embraced Martin Luther's heresy of the separation of Church and State upon which which the modern civil state is founded. Pope Saint Pius X recognized this fact as he gave a frank assessment of the heresies and errors of Modernism in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. [According to the Modernists] The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei.

 

Conciliarism's embrace of "religious liberty" and the "separation of Church and State" places its adherents on the side of Martin Luther and Freemasons and various modern social revolutionaries and Modernism itself as they mock and reject the Social Reign of Christ the King. The twin cornerstones of conciliarism's world view--"religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State"-- were condemned repeatedly on numerous occasions by true pope after true pope prior to the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. This means nothing, of course, to those who have endorsed Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned view of dogmatic teaching and past papal pronouncements as being "conditioned" by the historical circumstances that produced them and are thus in need of "modification" and "reinterpretation" as the conditions in which men themselves change over time.

To wit, an apologist for Ratzinger/Benedict apostate "social teaching" has had the temerity to repeat the false "pontiff's" false claims about history and about the teaching of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ concerning the relationship between His Holy Church and the civil state:

While this anthropology might seem very abstract it is a necessary foundation for political philosophy, explained Rourke. Our view of what the shared life of people should be is necessarily grounded on an understanding of what a person is and what a community is.

According to [Dr. Thomas] Rourke, Benedict XVI considers politics to be an exercise of reason, but a reason that is also informed by faith. As a result Christianity does not define learning as the mere acquisition of knowledge, but requires it to be guided by fundamental values, such as truth, beauty, and goodness.

When reason is separated from a clear understanding of the ends of human life, established by Creation and affirmed in the Ten Commandments, then it has no fixed reference points for making moral judgments. If this happens then the way is open to consequentialism, which denies that anything is good or bad in itself.

One interesting line of thought in the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger is the division between Church and state, Rourke comments. The separation by Jesus, in Mark 12:17, of the two -- "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," meant that Christianity destroyed the idea of a divine state.

Prior to Christianity the union of Church and state was the normal practice and even in the Old Testament the two were fused. In fact, this was the cause of the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, as they refused to accept the state religion.

The separation of the two by Jesus was beneficial for the state, as it did not have to live up to expectations of divine perfection, Cardinal Ratzinger affirmed. This new Christian perspective opened the door for a politics based on reason. (The Political Side of Benedict XVI.)

 

This is nothing other than an abject mockery of the Christ the King just as much as He was mocked by the Roman soldiers when they wove that Crown of Thorns and hammered it so very deep into His skull.

For Ratzinger/Benedict and his apologists to be correct Christ the King would have had to have hidden the "truth" of what He intended concerning Church-State relations until the "Second" Vatican Council. For Ratzinger/Benedict and his apologists to be correct the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, must have failed Holy Mother Church and her true popes as the thesis of the separation of Church and State was condemned repeatedly, as the positive obligation of the civil state to recognize the true religion an to accord it the favor and the protection of the laws as the common temporal good was pursued 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 for all eternity--was stressed as an immutable teaching from which no one could dissent legitimately.

Although readers of this site are very familiar with the authentic Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, there is always the possibility that someone who has not read previous articles and who is as uninformed about that Social Teaching as I was until the latter part of the 1980s might happen upon this site and see the contrast between Catholicism and conciliarism in this regard for the first time. Thus it is that Dr. Rourke's praise of Ratzinger/Benedict's blasphemous contention that Our Lord Himself, Christ the King, meant to teach us that the practice of a state religion was erroneous has to be reckoned according to the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church as summarized so brilliantly and so succinctly by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

 

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. " (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

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 a 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;"3 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.)

 

If Ratzinger/Benedict and apologists of his such as Dr. Thomas Rourke are correct, this means that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ permitted one true pope after another to be in error. Impossible. God is immutable. His truth may never be understood differently in one era than in the next, no less in ways that are complete and total contradictions of what His Holy Church has taught in His Holy Name from time immemorial. Who says so? Pope Pius IX and the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council say so?

• For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward

  • not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
  • but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
• Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.

God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.

Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .

3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1.)

 

Did God the Holy Ghost fail Pope Pius IX and the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council? Did He? He must have if the teaching given us by pope after pope after pope concerning the obligation possessed by the civil state and their concomitant condemnations of religious liberty and separation of Church and State were erroneous or, to use the philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity," only true at the time of promulgation but not true at a later time as the circumstances of men change.

Anyone who believes that God the Holy Ghost did not inspire the Fathers of Holy Mother Church's twenty legitimate councils to express themselves in the exact terms that they did blasphemes the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. Anyone who believes that propositions advanced by a true pope at one time are conditioned by historical circumstances and can thus be understood differently--or ignored entirely--stands anathematized by these words that have just been cited:

3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

 

No, not even the United States of America is exempted from recognizing the Catholic Church as the true religion and according her the favor and the protection of the laws:

For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

 

To assert, as Ratzinger/Benedict (who believes that almost everything about the Faith has to be "re-thought" and "worked out" all over again) did in his infamous address to the members of the Roman Curia and Prelature on December 22, 2005, and as Dr. Rourke is doing at the present time, that Our Lord's injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's was a rejection of state religion is to mock and spit upon Christ the King and to disparage the teaching that has been explicated in His Holy Name and under His Divine Authority by His true popes. Our Lord did not meant to reject the obligation of the the civil state to recognize the true religion and to assert this as so is to reject and mock Our Lord just as surely as did the Roman soldiers and as did Martin Luther and the other Protestant revolutionaries and the social revolutionaries who followed in their diabolical wake.

To render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's means for a citizen to obey all just laws that are in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and to recognize that the leaders of a civil state do indeed have a wide degree of autonomy in the decisions they make in the pursuit of the common temporal good as long as they keep in bind God's laws and the eternal good of the souls of their citizens. Even in the things of Caesar, however, the things of God appertain. Everything we do must redound to the honor and glory of God and serve the actual interests, both temporal and eternal, of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

A decision to build a roadway, for example, is not received from the hand of God and it thus one within the competency of civil officials to make. Such a decision concerning a roadway must be premised upon principles of justice (is there a real need for a highway, will it do more good than harm, how many people will be displaced) and, once undertaken, be constructed sturdily for the honor and glory of God and be able to withstand the pressure of the weight of the vehicles that will travel upon it over the years without having to be torn up for reconstruction constantly (thus inconveniencing the traveling public and lining the coffers of the contractors who profit from building highways designed to be torn up every few years as the proceeds of government contracts are returned in part to the office holders who gave the contractors the job to build and rebuild the highway to begin with).

Pope Saint Pius X reiterated this principle in Singulari Quadam, September 12, 1912:

These are fundamental principles: No matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end, namely, the Highest Good. All his actions, insofar as they are morally either good or bad (that is to say, whether they agree or disagree with the natural and divine law), are subject to the judgment and judicial office of the Church.

 

Moreover, the thirteen million Catholics who were martyred under the cruel oppression of Roman emperors between 67 A.D. and 313 A.D. were not killed because of the existence of a state religion but because the state religion of the Roman Empire was false. Many of the Catholics who were martyred in that two hundred forty-six year period could have saved their lives if they permitted some kind of representation of Our Lord to be placed in the Pantheon alongside images of false "gods," who they would be expected to worship or at least venerate alongside the image of Christ the King. No deal. No sale. They preferred death than to give any appearance of credibility to any false religion whatsoever, quite in contrast to the fawning admiration of false religions expressed by the conciliar "popes" and "bishops" as they have esteemed the symbols of false religions and have engaged in the forbidden practice of "inter-religious prayer" services.

Would any rational, sane human being want to assert that Christ the King, the very Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation, would esteem the symbols of false religions or would enter into "prayer" with those who reject His Sacred Divinity and/or reject articles contained in the Deposit of Faith that He Himself entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church? If He wouldn't, my good and very few readers, then none of His true Vicars on earth would. And none have.

Father Basil Meramo, who was expelled from the Society of Saint Pius X for refusing to go along with Bishop Bernard Fellay's gradual slide into the embrace of the conciliar authorities, explained the true history of what happened to the Catholic martyrs in the first centuries of the Church, pinpointing that the demands made upon those martyrs by the Roman authorities are exactly the same as those being made the conciliar authorities at the present time who are so eager to and have in fact given their open embrace to the "values" and symbols and places of "worship" of one false religion after another:

This problem is taking place with the General Superior (of the Society of St. Pius X) (…) who is selling out the Society by allying himself with the Vatican, which has not stepped back in anything. Where does Benedict XVI go? He goes to the Synagogue, he goes to the United Nations, and now he goes to the Society (SSPX) – another concubine in the pantheon of false religions.

This is not admissible. This is a tactic of Rome. I want you to know, dear brethren, that Rome of the Roman Empire was able to dominate the world by means of religious compromises. This is why Rome had a pantheon with all the principal gods of the important peoples who were subjugated by it. Since religious alliances were established and Rome had the same gods of the enemies, then there were no mutual attacks. Rome accepted the same gods of the Greeks in order to dominate the Greeks; Rome adopted the same gods of this or that people in order to dominate them. This was its tactic to govern.

This same tactic continues today in that Rome, which St. Peter - the first Pope of the Church - called Babylon. He was not in the Middle East; he was in Rome and he called it Babylon because it was the Babylon of the religions. He didn’t spare words, because it had an altar to every god. All known religions had their representatives there. (…) A Pope quoted in the Breviary – whose name I don't remember at this moment – said that at the end [of history] Rome will again have, as in the beginning, all the religions. It will return to its ancient paganism, rejoicing in hosting all religions. It will return to its old religious prostitution.

This is what we are witnessing today. And now they need Traditionalism to also be there with its rights – just like the Muslims or the Adventists have rights – but not the real rights of Tradition. (…)

This is why Benedict XVI went to the UN. What do you think he was doing there? He had nothing to do as a Catholic. So things go… So the kings and presidents of this world go. So goes religion riding the Beast. The woman in scarlet, the great harlot as the Apocalypse says. Don’t be scandalized at this because the Bible speaks very plain language and sometimes our effeminate ears are scandalized to hear the truth. But they are not scandalized to see all the pornography they see day and night on the Internet, TVs, movies, spectacles and fashions. They are not scandalized, yet they will warn you: “Be careful about the sermon of Fr. Basilio when he uses the expression great harlot.” This is the scandal of Pharisees.

So this woman goes about in her scarlet dress, like the prelates who wear purple and the cardinals wear red – the color of royalty, nobility. She rides the Beast fornicating with all the kings of the world. So religion goes.

And into this adulterous and apostate cohabitation, they want to incorporate the Society (SSPX) founded by Msgr. Lefebvre. But I, as a member of the Society – which will always be my family whether they expel me or not - I publicly, officially and until death oppose this cohabitation. And if one day I will cease to oppose this, it is because I will be dead. I would desire this for continuing to say what I am saying, for if this happens, there would be another saint-martyr. I nourish this desire because so I would go straight to Heaven, without stopping in Purgatory. God be praised [should this happen]! (A Bold Show of Dissatisfaction in the SSPX Ranks)

 

It is a distortion of all true history and a mockery of authentic Catholic teaching to claim that Our Lord Himself, Christ the King, abolished state religion, no less that He did so because of abuses associated with the false religions of the Roman Empire. False religions are evil. Evil. Nothing good can come from them. Nothing. Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

The late Louis-Edouard-François-Desiré Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, France, put the matter as follows in the Nineteenth Century:

Neither in His Person," Card, Pie said in a celebrated pastoral instruction, "nor in the exercise of His rights, can Jesus Christ be divided, dissolved, split up; in Him the distinction of natures and operations can never be separated or opposed; the divine cannot be incompatible to the human, nor the human to the divine. On the contrary, it is the peace, the drawing together, the reconciliation; it is the very character of union which has made the two things one: 'He is our peace, Who hat made both one." (Eph. 2:14). This is why St. John told us: 'every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and is now already in the world' (1 John 4:3; cf. also 1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John: 7). "So then, Card. Pie continues, "when I hear certain talk being spread around, certain pithy statements (i.e., 'Separation of Church and State,' for one, and the enigmatic axiom 'A free Church in a free State,' for another) prevailing from day to day, and which are being introduced into the heart of societies, the dissolvent by which the world must perish, I utter this cry of alarm: Beware the Antichrist." (Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, pp. 21-23.)

 

Yes, indeed, beware the Antichrist, for it is only the spirit of Antichrist that seeks to have Catholics make their peace with the falsehoods of separation of Church and State and religious liberty, something that Pope Leo XIII explained in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892:

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

 

It is also a distortion of all history to assert, as some conciliarists do, that the "Second" Vatican Council and the conciliar "popes" have "discovered" the "true" relationship between Church and State as this is to say that the great exemplars of the Social Reign of Christ the King who governed according to His Mind as they pursued the common temporal good in light of the eternal good of their subjects were "mistaken" in not accepting "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State." Was Holy Mother Church mistaken, therefore, to raise the likes of Edward the Confessor and Canute and Casimir and Hedwig and Wenceslaus and Henry the Emperor and Stephen of Hungary and Louis IX to her altars, hailing them for their just rule over men and their defense of Christendom itself? These great exemplars of the Social Reign of Christ the King knew that Catholicism was the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

Who says that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order? Just true pope after true pope, that's all, including Pope Saint Pius X as he condemned early precursors of conciliarism, the adherents of The Sillon in France, one hundred years ago this year:

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. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body.

This being said, what must be thought of the promiscuity in which young Catholics will be caught up with heterodox and unbelieving folk in a work of this nature? Is it not a thousand-fold more dangerous for them than a neutral association? What are we to think of this appeal to all the heterodox, and to all the unbelievers, to prove the excellence of their convictions in the social sphere in a sort of apologetic contest? Has not this contest lasted for nineteen centuries in conditions less dangerous for the faith of Catholics? And was it not all to the credit of the Catholic Church? What are we to think of this respect for all errors, and of this strange invitation made by a Catholic to all the dissidents to strengthen their convictions through study so that they may have more and more abundant sources of fresh forces? What are we to think of an association in which all religions and even Free-Thought may express themselves openly and in complete freedom? For the Sillonists who, in public lectures and elsewhere, proudly proclaim their personal faith, certainly do not intend to silence others nor do they intend to prevent a Protestant from asserting his Protestantism, and the skeptic from affirming his skepticism. Finally, what are we to think of a Catholic who, on entering his study group, leaves his Catholicism outside the door so as not to alarm his comrades who, “dreaming of disinterested social action, are not inclined to make it serve the triumph of interests, coteries and even convictions whatever they may be”? Such is the profession of faith of the New Democratic Committee for Social Action which has taken over the main objective of the previous organization and which, they say, “breaking the double meaning which surround the Greater Sillon both in reactionary and anti-clerical circles”, is now open to all men “who respect moral and religious forces and who are convinced that no genuine social emancipation is possible without the leaven of generous idealism.” (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

As noted before, conciliarists, starting with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and his absurd "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity," keep telling us that that such a teaching has become "obsolete." This is quite false on a number of accounts, starting with the simple truth that what was absolutely false in 1910 cannot become absolutely true a century later. If something is absolute false, you see, it is absolutely false of its very nature. Was Pope Saint Pius X in error? Did he get it wrong? Were each of the popes who simply reiterated the falsehood of the separation of the Church and State and who condemned religious liberty mistaken? If they were, the true sedevacantists are the conciliarists as their denial of the binding nature of the Catholic Church's immutable Social Teaching must mean that God the Holy Ghost failed the Church and her true popes as they explicated this teaching cum una voce, that is, with one voice, something that the late Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, writing a somewhat veiled rejoinder to the Americanist Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., explained in Duties of the Catholic State in Regard to Religion, 1954:

These principles are firm and unchanging. They were valid in the days of Innocent III and Boniface VIII. They are valid in the days of Leo XIII and Pius XII, who has reaffirmed them in more than one of his documents. That is why, with unyielding firmness, he has also recalled Rulers to their duties, by appealing to the warning of the Holy Ghost, a warning which applies to all times. In the Encyclical Letter, , , Mystici Corporis, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius XII, speaks as follows: "We must implore God that all those who rule over people may love wisdom, so that upon them may never fall that fearful judgment of the Holy Spirit: ‘The Most High will examine your works and search out your thoughts; because being ministers of his kingdom, you have not judged rightly nor kept the law of justice, nor walked according to the will of God. Horribly and speedily will he appear to you; for a most severe judgment shall be for them that bear rule. For to him that is little mercy is granted; but the mighty shall be mightily tormented. For God will not except any man's person, neither will he stand in awe of any man's greatness: for he made the little and the great, and he hath equally care of all.' "

Referring back, then, to what I have said above concerning the agreement of the Encyclicals that have been called in question, I am certain that no one can prove that there has been any change whatever, in regard to these principles, between the Encyclical Letter, Summi Pontificatus, of Pius XII, and the Encyclicals of Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris against Communism, Mil brennender Sorge against Nazism, and Non abbiamo bisogno against the State-monopoly of Fascism, on the one hand; and the earlier Encyclicals of Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, Libertas and Sapientiae Christianae, on the other.

"The ultimate and supreme norms of society, those which are its foundation stone," declares the August Pontiff in his Radio-message of Christmas, 1942, "cannot be impaired or weakened by the intervention of human minds. They may be denied, ignored, despised, transgressed, but they can never be abrogated in a manner juridically efficacious.

 

Cardinal Ottaviani also discussed the philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned Modernist approach of Ratzinger/Benedict himself, that what was true once loses it binding force as circumstances change because its initial expression was conditioned by the historical circumstances that gave rise to it, which is nothing other than blasphemy against God the Holy Ghost.

Here the problem presents itself of how the Church and the lay state are to live together. Some Catholics are propagating ideas with regard to this point which are not quite correct. Many of these Catholics undoubtedly love the Church and rightly intend to find a mode of possible adaptation to the circumstances of the times. But it is none the less true that their position reminds one of that of the faint-hearted soldier who wants to conquer without fighting, or of that of the simple, unsuspecting person who accepts a hand, treacherously held out to him, without taking account of the fact that this hand will subsequently pull him across the Rubicon towards error and injustice.

The first mistake of these people is precisely that of not accepting fully the "arms of truth" and the teaching which the Roman Pontiffs, in the course of this last century, and in particular the reigning Pontiff, Pius XII, by means of encyclicals, allocutions and instructions of all kinds, have given to Catholics on this subject.

To justify themselves, these people affirm that, in the body of teaching given in the Church, a distinction must be made between what is permanent and what is transitory, this latter being due to the influence of particular passing conditions. Unfortunately, however, they include in this second zone the principles laid down in the Pontifical documents, principles on which the teaching of the Church has remained constant, as they form part of the patrimony of Catholic doctrine.

In this matter, the pendulum theory, elaborated by certain writers in an attempt to sift the teaching set forth in Encyclical Letters at different times, cannot be applied. "The Church," it has been written, "takes account of the rhythm of the world's history after the fashion of a swinging pendulum which, desirous of keeping the proper measure, maintains its movement by reversing it when it judges that it has gone as far as it should.... From this point of view a whole history of the Encyclicals could be written. Thus in the field of Biblical studies, the Encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritu, comes after the Encyclicals Spiritus Paraclitus and Providentissimus.  In the field of Theology or Politics, the Encyclicals, Summi Pontificatus, Non abbiamo bisogno and Ubi Arcano Deo, come after the Encyclical, Immortale Dei."

Now if this were to be understood in the sense that the general and fundamental principles of public Ecclesiastical Law, solemnly affirmed in the Encyclical Letter, Immortale Dei, are merely the reflection of historic moments of the past, while the swing of the pendulum of the doctrinal Encyclicals of Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII has passed in the opposite direction to different positions, the statement would have to be qualified as completely erroneous, not only because it misrepresents the teaching of the Encyclicals themselves, but also because it is theoretically inadmissible. In the Encyclical Letter, Humani Generis, the reigning Pontiff teaches us that we must recognize in the Encyclicals the ordinary magisterium of the Church: "Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand assent, in that, when writing such Letters, the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their teaching authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say "He who heareth you heareth Me" (St. Luke 10:16); and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already belongs for other reasons to Catholic doctrine."

Because they are afraid of being accused of wanting to return to the Middle Ages, some of our writers no longer dare to maintain the doctrinal positions that are constantly affirmed in the Encyclicals as belonging to the life and legislation of the Church in all ages.  For them is meant the warning of Pope Leo XIII who, recommending concord and unity in the combat against error, adds that "care must be taken never to connive, in anyway, at false opinions, never to withstand them less strenuously than truth allows."

 

Do you see that the late Alfred Cardinal Ottaviani was condemning very specifically the idiocy of Ratzinger/Benedict's "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity," which is nothing other than a repackaged and re-labeled means of recycling Modernist suppositions that were condemned by the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council and by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis and The Oath Against Modernism? Understand and accept this, my friends, and you will see how the whole conciliar house of cards falls down right on top of itself, card by card.

Indeed, some conciliar apologists do not seem overly impressed when they are confronted with Pope Pius XII's simple reminder of the binding nature of what is contained in encyclical letters when the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church is reiterated within their texts. Nor do they seem overly concerned with this firm condemnation issued by Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, of those who reject the perennially binding nature of Catholic Church:

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

 

Moreover, nations must give public honor to Mary our Immaculate Queen just as they obliged under the Divine Positive Law to acknowledge the Social Kingship of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Those who believe that they can pursue social order without Christ the King and without Mary our Immaculate Queen are fools of the first order. Fools. Fools.

Those who are ashamed of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen in the "public square," fearing to lose votes or worldly influence or prestige or income, are betrayers of the Holy Faith and show themselves to be most manifestly unpatriotic, for a true patriot wills the good of his nation, which is that it be Catholicized under the yoke of Christ the King and under the maternal care and protect of our Queen, Mary Immaculate. The Rosary is the chief means, after Holy Mass itself, to order one's soul rightly to First and Last Things. Civil states have an obligation to organize Rosary processions in our of our Queen who was conceived without any stain of Original or Actual Sin, she who is our Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate.

Christ the King was mocked when He was crowned with thorns on Good Friday. He is mocked anew today by conciliar apologists, starting with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B. described the extent of the mockery that Our Lord suffered as a result of our own sins and those of the whole word as He was crowned with those painful thorns:

Jesus is made over to the soldiers to be scourged. They rudely strip Him of His garments, and tie Him to the pillar which is kept for this kind of torture. Fiercely do they strike Him; the Blood flows down His sacred Body. Let us adore this the second bloodshedding of our Jesus, whereby He expiates the sins we and the whole world have committed by the flesh. This scourging is by the hands of Gentiles: the Jews delivered Him delivered Him up to be punished, and the Romans were the executioners: thus have we all had our share in the awful deicide.

At last the soldiers are tired; they loose their Victim; but it is not out of anything like pity. Their cruelty is going to rest, and their rest is derision. Jesus has been called King of the Jews: a king, say they, must have a crown! Accordingly, they make one for the Son of David! It is of thorns. They press it violently upon His head, and this is the third bloodshedding of our Redeemer. then, that they may make their scoffing perfect, the soldiers throw a scarlet cloak over His shoulders, and put a reed, for a sceptre, into His hand; and bending their knee before Him, they thus salute Him: 'Hail, King of the Jews!' This insulting homage is accompanied with blows upon His face; they spit upon Him; and, from time to time, take the reed from His hand, wherewith to strike the thorns deeper into His head.

Here, the Christian prostrates himself before His Saviour, and says to Him with a heart full of compassion and veneration: 'Yes! my Jesus! Thou art King of the Jews! Thou art the Son of David, and therefore our Messias and our Redeemer! Israel, that hath so lately proclaimed Thee King, now unkings Thee; the Gentiles scoff at Thy royalty, making it a subject for keener insult; but reign Thou must, and over both Jews and Gentiles: over the Jews, by Thy justice, for they are soon to feel the sceptre of Thy revenge; over the Gentiles, by Thy mercy, for Thine apostles are soon to lead them to Thy feet. Receive, dearest King! our homage and submission! Reign now and forever over our hearts, yes, over our whole being.'

Thus mangled and bleeding, holding the reed in His hand, and with the scarlet tatters on His shoulders, Jesus is led back to Pilate. It is just the sight that will soften the hearts of the people; at least, Pilate thinks so; and taking Him with him to a balcony of the palace, he shows Him to the crowd below, saying: 'Behold the Man!' Little did Pilate know all that these few words conveyed! Man--the Christian understands the full force of the word thus applied to our Redeemer. Adam, the first man, rebelled against God, and, by his sin, deranged the whole work of the Creator: as a punishment for his pride and intemperance, the flesh tyrannized over the spirit; the very earth was cursed, and thorns were to be its growth. Jesus, the new Man, comes into this world, bearing upon Him, not the reality, but the appearance, the likeness, of sin: in Him, the work of the Creator regains the primeval order; but the change was not wrought without violence. To teach us that the flesh must be brought into subjection to the spirit, Jesus' Flesh was torn by scourges; to teach us that pride must give way to humility, the only crown that Jesus wears is made of thorns. Yes, 'Behold the Man!' the triumph of the spirit over the flesh, the triumph of humility over pride. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Passiontide & Holy Week--Volume 6, pp. 456-458.)

 

Christ the King will not be mocked by the likes of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and his fellow conciliar apologists for the errors of religious liberty and the separation of Church and State. Who says so? Pope Pius XI says so, that's who:

Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ. It will call to their minds the thought of the last judgment, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults; for his kingly dignity demands that the State should take account of the commandments of God and of Christian principles, both in making laws and in administering justice, and also in providing for the young a sound moral education. (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925.)

 

We must always be champions of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen as we make reparation for the blasphemous rejection of Our King's Social Reign over men and their nations by the conciliar "popes" and their confederates, mindful of our need to make reparation for our own sins of pride, for our own refusal to let Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to reign as the King over every single aspect of our hearts and souls without any exception whatsoever.

Concentrating first and foremost on our own souls and getting ourselves to Sacrament of Penance on a weekly basis, if possible, especially during this Holy Week, may we call upon Our Lady, Mary Immaculate, to recover by penance what we have lost by sin, seeking freely to lift high the Cross, which is the one and only standard of true human liberty, inviting all men to keep her company at the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of that same Cross in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition offered by true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs where no concessions are made to conciliarism, praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permit.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint 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