More Rationalizations and Distortions

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Rest. That's all I want. Just a little rest now and again. There are times, however, when the conciliarists work overtime to prevent me from getting my rest. Think of me what you will. This is a plot, I tell you, a plot. They're out to get me. They're out to deprive my wife of her husband my daughter of her father and Chase of the leader of his pack. This is a plot. (Doesn't anyone out there in cyberspace have a sense of humor any more?)

Rationalizations attempting to justify the travesty represented by the accolades paid to the late United States Senator Edward Moore Kennedy after his death and scandalous funeral continue despite the embarrassing efforts of Sean "Cardinal" O'Malley, the conciliar "archbishop" of Boston, Massachusetts, to portray his decision to permit that funeral and to be in attendance at it as an act of "mercy" for the late senator and a "recognition" of the Kennedy family's "contributions" to public life in the United States of America.

The latest to offer his own set of rationalizations--and distortions--to the scandal represented by the counterfeit church of conciliarism's treatment of the pro-abortion, pro-perversity Edward Moore Kennedy is "Bishop" Robert Morlino of the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, known for his fiery defense of the inviolability of innocent human life from the moment of conception through all subsequent stages until natural death, including breaking ranks from his brother conciliar "bishops" in Wisconsin to oppose a state law that mandates that all hospitals, including those under conciliar control, distribute the so-called "Plan B emergence contraceptive," which is nothing other than another baby-killing potion.

Alas, "Bishop" Morlino's fiery defense of the innocent preborn, as laudable as that is as he has confronted pro-abortion Catholic politicians, comes all wrapped together in the language of conciliarspeak, replete with the extra added touch of the late Joseph "Cardinal" Bernardin's "consistent ethic of life" (seamless garment) that was unveiled in a speech given by the doctrinally and liturgically and morally corrupt Bernardin at Fordham University on December 6, 1983, an address that was designed to make the likes of a Mario Matthew Cuomo, then serving as the Catholic pro-abortion Governor of the State of New York, more acceptable in the minds of "pro-life" Catholic voters in the event that Cuomo sought the Democrat Party presidential nomination in 1984:

The substance of a Catholic position on a consistent ethic of life is rooted in a religious vision. But the citizenry of the United States is radically pluralistic in moral and religious conviction. So we face the challenge of stating our case, which is shaped in terms of our faith and our religious convictions, in non-religious terms which others of different faith convictions might find morally persuasive. . . . As we seek to shape and share the vision of a consistent ethic of life, I suggest a style governed by the following rule: We should maintain and clearly communicate our religious convictions but also maintain our civil courtesy. We should be vigorous in stating a case and attentive in hearing another's case; we should test everyone's logic but not question his or her motives. ("A Consistent Ethic of Life: An American-Catholic Dialogue".).

 

The Bernardin approach to "life issues," which attempts to treat moral issues such as the theory of the just war, national defense, the death penalty, statist programs to "assist" the poor on a level of moral equivalency with opposition to baby-killing under cover of the civil law, contrasts, of course, very sharply with that of the true popes of the Catholic Church, who taught clearly and unequivocally that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. We do not speak in "non-religious" terms. We make proper Catholic distinctions when speaking about moral issues, remembering always to speak as Catholics at all times without ever dissenting from anything contained within the Deposit of Faith at any time for any reason, something that Pope Leo XIII made clear Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:

 

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.

 

Edward Moore Kennedy was a dissenting Catholic in life. He died as a dissenting Catholic without once ever making a public statement abjuring his support for baby-killing under cover of the civil law, which, as a matter of simple Justice, he was required to do in order to start to undo the harm that he did by his aggressive, relentless and unapologetically vicious support of baby-killing under cover of the civil law and by his promotion of the careers of politicians, bureaucrats and judges of such support for the American genocide that has now taken over fifty million innocent lives by surgical means alone. Every single one of the late senator's children and nieces and nephews who are public life support baby-killing and special rights for perversity under cover of the civil law. There is nothing that Edward Moore Kennedy did in life--or had prepared for publication after his death--that has done anything in any way, shape or form to publicly recant his support of baby-killing and to urge his family members and fellow members of the Democratic Party, including the Marxist-trained statist named Barack Hussein Obama, to do so as well.

These facts, according to the likes of "Bishop" Morlino, must be weighed against Kennedy's support for government programs to support the "poor" despite the fact that these programs were designed and administered by utilitarians and positivists and relativists who have used these programs as "wedges" to make more and more people dependent upon government programs, not the charity provided them by individual Catholics according to the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity enunciated by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, so that they will be indebted to those statists--and the Democratic Party as the "party" of statism--in one election after another. Government-subsidy programs not founded in Catholic principles must of necessity become more and more entrenched--and more and more oppressive--as they are accepted without question as the first and the only means to "help" the poor. As I noted a few days ago in Sean O'Malley: Coward and Hypocrite, these programs are not received from the hand of God and not one of them--that's right, not one of them--can in any way indemnify a person who has been personally and viciously responsible for making possible the shedding of the blood of innocent babies under cove of the civil law in the United States of America and throughout the world.

According to the adherents of the "seamless garment" ideology, however, anyone who dares questions the naturalistic precepts of these programs and/or who critiques how they have created classes of dependent citizens while advancing various evils (such as contraception in the name of "easing" "economic burdens" for families) is not being "consistently 'pro-life.'" It is this lie--and is nothing other than a lie from the devil himself--that has been used to indemnify the careers of pro-abortion Catholics in public life as they have participated actively in support of the American genocide and as they have deemed fit to call themselves "charitable" by the use of the confiscatory taxing power of the Federal government of the United States of America to rob citizens of their own private property in order to subsidize government programs that have, under the cloak of the slogan of "helping the poor," have actually institutionalized one evil after another, including the evil of statism itself, which, of course, is but the logical result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and institutionalized by the ethos of Judeo-Masonry enshrined in the naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles and practices of the modern civil state.

Theological and philosophical errors can never be the foundations of any type of true Charity. Never as in never, ladies and gentlemen. One simple paragraph from Pope Saint Pius X's Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, obliterates the whole notion of any kind of government-sponsored "charity" that is not founded entirely upon the truths of the Catholic Faith:

Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

The Catholic Church has taught us consistently and without any contradiction whatsoever that the civil state has an obligation to pursue the common temporal as it helps to fosters those conditions conducive to the pursuit 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, something that is rejected by the lords of Modernity and the lords of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Pope Saint Pius X summarized this consistent and unbroken teaching very succinctly in one paragraph of 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.

 

Passages such as these create a little problem for conciliarists such as "Bishop" Morlino, who, along with the conciliarist-in-chief, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, supports the thesis of "separation of Church and state" that was termed a "thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error" by Pope Saint Pius X. For "Bishop" Morlino and Ratzinger/Benedict to be correct, the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity would have had to fail the Church for nearly two millennia as one pope after another condemned forcefully and without equivocation the absolute falsehood that is the separation of Church and State. How can something declared in 1906 by a canonized pope to be a "thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error," reiteration the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church, become "true" less than sixty years later?

Pope Pius XI, writing in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 22, 1922, made it clear we are to keep ever in mind the pronouncements made about the Catholic Church's teaching on the necessity of praying and working for the confessionally Catholic civil state, and that those who failed to keep these teachings ever in mind were nothing more than moral, legal, and social modernists:

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.

It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14) (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

 

Those who contend that what is taught by a true pope in an encyclical letter does not necessarily bind future popes is making a mockery of the Catholic Faith. True popes never contradict each other. True councils of the Catholic Church do not contradict or place into doubt by means of ambiguity the clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church.  It is not possible to "dissent" from the encyclical letters of true popes and the pronouncements made by true councils of the Catholic Church.

Pope Pius XII, writing in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, made it clear that we must accept what is contained in a papal encyclical letter as a perfect expression of the Catholic Faith. There is no room for "dissent" or equivocation:

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in 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"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Robert Morlino and Sean O'Malley and every other official of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is bound by consistent teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the obligation that the civil state has to recognize the true religion and accord her the favor and the protection of the laws. While it may not be possible to realize this teaching in the concrete circumstances of Modernity and while it may be necessary for Holy Mother Church to avail herself of various constitutional and legal provisions of the modern civil state to assure that she can continue her work of sanctifying and instructing her children, the Catholic Church never wavers in her commitment to the necessity of restoring the confessionally Catholic civil state as a matter of irreformable principle, never ceases to exhort her children to pray and work for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, never tires of explaining to Catholics and non-Catholics alike that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, said that Catholics were to reject any association with those possessed of the Masonic ethos of the state, an ethos that is enshrined in conciliar documents such as Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, December 7, 1965, and in the words and actions of the conciliar "pontiffs:"

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.)

 

Here we see why there is such a false sense of "mercy" extended to the late Edward Moore Kennedy on the part of the conciliar revolutionaries. The lords of conciliarism, starting with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, show their "respect of all religions" as they under under the "mask of universal tolerance." The lords of conciliarism have violated openly and publicly and boldly the First and Second Commandments as they have esteemed the symbols of false religions and praised their nonexistent "ability" to "contribute" to to the "building" of the "better world." Joseph Ratzinger himself told us that the text of Gaudium et Spes represented "the Church's official reconciliation" with the principles of the French Revolution, calling it a "countersyllabus of errors," meaning, of course, that Pope Pius IX was wrong. Preposterous, arrogant and blasphemous:

Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)

 

It is the conciliarists' "reconciliation" with the naturalistic principles of Modernity that have made baby-killing under the cover of the law more and more intractable with each passing year as it is impossible to fight moral evils with naturalistic tools in a naturalistic paradigm that denies the simple truth that Catholicism is indeed the one and only foundation of personal and social order. The devil is delighted that "pro-life" "bishops" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism "weigh" Edward Kennedy's support for statist programs that violated the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity as they created dependent classes of citizens to entice them to continue to vote for statists despite their support of baby-killing and perversity and other evils along against his support for baby-killing, oblivious--and I mean absolutely and totally oblivious and ignorant--of the fact that no one can pursue true temporal justice when they support and promote those things are repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity:

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.)

 

It is with all of this mind that "Bishop" Morlino's letter rationalizing the conciliar honors paid to the late pro-abortion Edward Moore Kennedy must be read.

As most of the main points made by "Bishop" Morlino have been covered above, it will be necessary to make only a few more additional points in an interjectory manner as I had done in Sean O'Malley: Coward and Hypocrite:

Dear Friends,

As I complete my time of rest and recuperation, I found myself unpredictably (at least had I been able to predict six months ago) with time available to me to watch on the television most of the events surrounding the funeral and burial of Senator Edward Moore Kennedy. For myself, the time was prayerful and well spent because I knew a lot about Senator Kennedy when he was still fairly young and, of course, I was younger still.

Senator Kennedy and I, many years ago, were, according to the common understanding, not quite ready to get in line to go and meet our Judge. There was plenty of time available, we presumed, to prepare ourselves to take our place in that line, and to welcome that part of our humanity which is experiencing the mystery of suffering and death.

As I watched Senator Kennedy’s funeral, it became very real to me that not only am I and so many of my friends very much a part of that line right now, getting ready to meet our maker, but we’re rather soberingly close to the front of that line. As I speak in this way, I don’t want anyone to think that I am indirectly referring to some medical crisis that brings me close to death — there is no such crisis. At the same time, realizing that one is much closer to the front of that line challenges me to intensify my efforts to grow in holiness and to be evermore alive through the mercy and forgiveness of God. And for that, I am grateful for the experience of last weekend.

There can be no doubt that Senator Kennedy’s accomplishments as the “Lion of the Senate” always were intended to help the most poor and downtrodden in our society, whether in terms of helping the developmentally handicapped, or young children with little or no strong educational opportunities, or taking leadership in providing healthcare for children, and on and on and on. Senator Kennedy certainly did live out the Gospel, in that the lifestyle of being a disciple of Jesus Christ means seeing the hungry and feeding them, seeing the naked and clothing them, seeing those who are sick or in prison and visiting them, and other like occurrences that are part of our everyday life. No one can take credit away from Senator Kennedy for his leadership in these very important areas. ("Bishop" Morlin's column )

 

STOP! As noted before, Senator Kennedy did not "live out the Gospel" by means of promoting statist programs that were designed and administered by positivists and utilitarians and relativists and statists who have used these programs to advance the evils of "family planning" and to undermine many legitimate Natural Law rights of parents, especially as it pertains to the education of children.

 

And yet there was also a disconnect in his life between the strong exercise of pro-life leadership in the areas described above and his leadership against the pro-life cause relative to the abortion of our tiniest brothers and sisters, embryonic stem-cell research, same-sex marriage, and so on.

The challenge for us as Catholics in the United States — and it is a challenge both personally and as a community — is to bridge that disconnect and pull that whole seamless garment of the defense of life together, rather than rending that garment in twain and choosing one, while almost, or actually, excluding the other. The social teaching of the Church and her pro-life stance surely are interwoven as a seamless garment. ("Bishop" Morlino's column )

 

STOP! There is no such thing as the "seamless garment of the defense of life" that weaves together support for statist programs that are in violation of the Natural law principle of subsidiarity and opposition to chemical and surgical baby-killing under cover of the civil law. There is absolutely no moral equivalence between such statist programs and opposition to the one of the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Keep trying, keep trying.

 

Senator Kennedy, a good number of years ago, convened a meeting of priests and very high-level theologians to address the issue of Catholic political leaders and their votes with regard to abortion. Obviously, the very convening of this meeting showed that he took his Catholicism seriously and did not consider himself to be an accomplished theologian. Sadly, that meeting simply became another occasion for the development by theologians of the “two-conscience” approach to the faith for Catholic political leaders  — that is the approach which says, “privately I’m opposed to abortion, but in the public arena there are other conflicting responsibilities which allow me to vote in favor of legal abortion.”

No matter how many theologians get together, the two-conscience theory is irreparably flawed and wrong, and no one can make it otherwise. But if Senator Kennedy was given this advice and this approach, this “catechesis” — false though it is — by prominent theologians, it could at least be said that there was some ground for confusion and ambiguity in his own practice about these matters. The priests and theologians who counseled Senator Kennedy are not free of blame for causing the confusion and the ambiguity through false catechesis. ("Bishop" Morlino's column )

 

STOP! "Bishop" Morlino is, of course, correct in stating that the two-conscience theory is "irreparably flawed and wrong." Pope Leo XIII made this clear in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue.

 

"Bishop" Morlino, however, distorts the purpose of that meeting in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, thirty-five years ago now (see WSJ.com - Opinion: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma.) The Kennedys wanted their theological "advisers" to "advise" them how to support abortion under cover of the civil law and remain "Catholics" in "good standing. The meeting in Hyannisport was not a dispassionate "search for truth." No, it was an effort to indemnify the Kennedys in a cloak of "personal conscience" while at the same time maintaining their "private" beliefs. The meeting had an end, a goal, and that was to find a way for the Kennedys to support surgical abortion under cover of the civil law. There was no confusion or doubt in the mind of Edward Moore Kennedy about this, something that he demonstrated as soon as the Supreme Court of the United States of America rendered its decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973.

 

God forbid that I be taken as making excuses for Teddy Kennedy’s behavior in certain areas, yet Senator Kennedy’s having written a personal letter to our Holy Father during his last days, a letter that was hand-delivered by President Obama, is also an indication that he believed that the pope alone was the Vicar of Christ, and he wanted to make absolutely sure that our Holy Father received his letter. And too, since priests were regularly present to him during his final year and final days, it would be more reasonable than not to believe that he had made a good confession. ("Bishop" Morlino's column )

 

STOP THIS MADNESS! The letter that Edward Moore Kennedy sent to the conciliarist-in-chief, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, a man who has dared--and the word is dared--to blaspheme the honor and glory and majesty of God by esteeming the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands and calling such places as mosques as "sacred" and treating a dead religion, Talmudic Judaism, as though it is a perfectly valid means of salvation for its adherents, was self-serving and gratuitous. It was Edward Moore Kennedy's last bit of political grandstanding to posture himself as a "faithful" Catholic.

A man who supported two of the four sins that cried out to Heaven had the obligation before God to make a full and complete public abjuration of that support. He had an obligation to do so in life and as he approached death to make reparation for his sins and to provide a full and publicly manifest example to his children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews and lone surviving sister and each of his political supporters, including Barack Hussein Obama, that it is impossible to pursue the common temporal good and to support chemical and surgical baby-killing under cover of the civil law and/or to promote "special rights," including "marriage," for those steeped in unrepentant sins of perversity against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

Furthermore, why is it reasonable to assume that Edward Moore Kennedy made a "good confession"? Why? He evidently made use of what is called the "Sacrament of Reconciliation" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism on a regular basis. Leaving aside the sacramental validity of those confessions if they were heard by invalidly "ordained" presbyters according to the false rites of a false church, a good confessor would have made it clear to the late senator that he could not be Absolved of his support for abortion unless he publicly abjured that support and did everything within his power to counsel those who looked to him for political leadership and guidance to do so as well. There is every reason to believe that Edward Moore Kennedy went to his grave supporting abortion, especially since he authorized no one to speak in his name at his Novus Ordo service to state the had died regretting and abjuring his support for abortion.

Sorry, "Bishop" Morlino, Edward Moore Kennedy lived as a politically calculating Catholic. He died as a politically calculating Catholic. While God alone has judged the late senator's immortal soul, we must use our Catholic reason--and not fanciful desires--to assess Kennedy's words and actions, and he has left us no indication that he regretted his virulent support for abortion and "gay marriage" in the slightest.

One of Kennedy's last public acts was to write to the pro-abortion Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, to urge him to change a law that had been changed at his, Kennedy's request, in 2004 to make sure that the "people" of the Bay State could elect a successor to the pro-abortion John F. Kerry if the latter had defeated then President George Walker Bush that year, taking the decision to appoint a replacement out of the hand of the then Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. Kennedy wanted in 2004 to assure that a pro-abort succeeded Kerry if the latter became President of the United States of America, and he went to his death asking the pro-abortion Deval Patrick to change the law that he had helped to change, all to assure that a pro-abort would replace him, Kennedy, in the United States Senate upon his death.

A good confession, "Bishop" Morlino? Think again. No sincere, repentant Catholic goes to his grave seeking to assure that a pro-abortion governor would appoint his successor in a legislative seat. Think again.

 

All of this is leading me up to the expression of my contentment with how our Church, in a subdued fashion, celebrated the Rites of Christian Burial for Senator Kennedy — the proclamation of God’s Mercy was powerful, the prayer for forgiveness of his past sins was clearly offered, and all of this in a subdued way because of his long-standing and public holding of pro-abortion and other stances which have been a scandal in the literal sense.

The only aspects of the Funeral Rites which were not low key were those on the guest-list, where family preferences are generally granted. ("Bishop" Morlino's column )

 

STOP THE INSANITY! Edward Moore Kennedy's "Mass of Christian Burial" was conducted in a "subdued manner"? Are you serious? Placido Domingo and Yo-Yo Ma and an endless procession of laity in the sanctuary? The Catholic Church teaches us that the sanctuary is the exclusive preserve of a bishop and priests and deacons and sub-deacons and altar servers, who must be males as they are extensions of the hands the priest, who is acts in persona Christi as an alter Christus, Who is male. The sanctuary is the Holy of Holies that is at one and the same time Mount Calvary and Heaven. No layman other than those just listed may enter a Catholic sancutary during a valid offering of the true Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.

Subdued manner? There was nothing subdued about the endless, unconditional praise heaped upon Edward Moore Kennedy by Fathers Donald Monan and Mark Hession, neither of whom mentioned one single, solitary word about the innocent preborn whose lives were snuffed out as a result of the votes cast by Edward Moore Kennedy in the United States Senate and as a result of the men and the women he nominated to serve on the Federal bench and the men and women he supported for public office. As I noted a few days ago, "Bishop" Morlino, how many women killed their babies because Edward Moore Kennedy reaffirmed them in their beliefs that it was their "right" to do so?

Subdued manner? The white vestments are themselves an indication of the presumption in favor of a person's salvation, one of the chief hallmarks of the counterfeit nature of a false religion that has broken with two hundred centuries of Catholic tradition in the use of black at a requiem Mass, which is an occasion of praying for the repose of the immortal soul of one who has died.

Pope Pius XII warned quite specifically against those innovators who would dare to eliminate black as a liturgical vestment as the white vestments used in the "Mass of Christian Burial" signify a Protestant spirit of "celebration," not the Catholic sense represented in the hymn Dies Irae, mandated in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition but not used, at least not in a mandatory manner, in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service:

Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See

 

The counterfeit church of conciliarism has indeed strayed from the right path, and this infidelity was on full display at the "funeral Mass" of Edward Moore Kennedy as his relatives read one ideologically-charged petition after another from the "ambo" in the sanctuary, including a petition for "straights" and "gays," implying that it is somewhat "uncharitable" to oppose a "lifestyle" founded in perversity and that seeks approval from others even though is bases human self-identification on one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven, the sin of Sodom.

While we pray for those steeped in the mental illness represented by an inclination to commit perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, it is not uncharitable to denounce perversity and to call upon those steeped in it to cease and desist from their public promotion of this sin and to cease and desist from their demand for social acceptance in the name of a false "tolerance." This is from the devil, "Bishop" Morlino, and not from God, Who wants us to quit our sins and not to base our human identify upon our unrepentant persistence in them. Shame on you, shame on you, "Bishop" Morlino, for claiming that Edward Moore Kennedy's "funeral Mass" was subdued when it was nothing other than than celebration of statism and the promotion of sin under the cover of the civil law and in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity." Where was the mention of the restoration of legal protection for the preborn?

Subdued manner? What a reprehensible distortion of the truth of the celebration of a life dedicated to the promotion of social evils under the cover of the civil law. No one can claim to be a friend of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by promoting the very thing, sin, that caused Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and that caused His Blessed Mother's Immaculate Hear to be pierced through and through with those Seven Swords of Sorrow.

 

I’m afraid, however, that for not a few Catholics, the funeral rites for Senator Kennedy were a source of scandal — that is, quite literally, led them into sin. From not a few corners has come the question, “how on earth could Teddy Kennedy be buried from the Church?” There have also been expressions from some, that “whatever happens in Church, Senator Kennedy will now face justice, which will lead him inside the gates of Hell.”

No one rejoices that a soul goes to Hell.

From the earliest days of the Church it was defined as sinful to enjoy the thought that someone might be in Hell. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit worked powerfully through history so that Hell could be avoided by the proper exercise of human freedom, and to take delight in the perceived foiling of God’s plan is wrong.

Pope Benedict XVI has written very beautifully that on the Cross of Christ there was lived out a conflict between God’s justice, in that someone who was Himself equal to God had to die in reparation for man’s sinfulness, and God’s mercy: from the very beginning, the Church believed and taught that Jesus died precisely so that sins might be forgiven. His body was broken and His blood was shed so that sins might be forgiven, so that there might be mercy.

The death of Senator Kennedy has called forth at least an apparent rejection of mercy on the part of not a few Catholics. On the cross of Christ, God’s justice came into conflict with God’s mercy. God’s justice was fully satisfied, but mercy triumphed in the conflict, according to the teaching of Pope Benedict. Without denying any misdeeds on the part of Senator Kennedy, the Church, seeking to reflect the face of Christ, proclaimed God’s mercy for the whole world to see in a subdued but unmistakable way. It was more than appropriate. ("Bishop" Morlino's column )

 

STOP THE CARICATURING OF THOSE WHO HAVE CRITCIZED THE KENNEDY TRAVESTY. Yes, "Bishop" Morlino, no one rejoices that a soul goes to Hell, and no one who has criticized the conciliar honors given to Edward Moore Kennedy rejoices about the possibility that the late senator's immortal soul might be in Hell. The loss of soul for all eternity is a dreadful thing, and the loss of just one soul, no less many souls, for all eternity is what helped to pierce Our Lady's Immaculate Heart with the Sixth Sword of Sorrow at the Pieta as her Divine Son's dead Body was placed in her loving embrace for the last time prior to His burial. Don't you dare, "Bishop" Morlino, to caricature any of us who have commented as Catholics about the gravity of dying as Edward Moore Kennedy did, the gravity of dying as a publicly unreconstructed, unapologetic supporter of chemical and surgical baby-killing and of "marriage" for those of the same gender steeped in perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

Edward Moore Kennedy had time to prepare for his death, choosing to make or to issue no public statements abjuring his support for the moral evils that no amount of support for unjust statist welfare programs can ever undo in the slightest. God is merciful, but He requires contrition and amendment of one's life for one to be Absolved of his sins, little facts that are lost upon the student, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, of one of the chief propagators of the heresy of universal salvation, the late Hans Urs von Balthasar.

As I noted a few days ago, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI did not discharge his pastoral duties to Edward Moore Kennedy prior to the latter's death. He further indemnified the late senator by refusing to demand a public abjuration of his errors. Then again, how can one who is steeped in a variety of errors that contradict the Catholic Faith (see Ratzinger's War Against Catholicism) demand that another Catholic steeped in errors abjure them? Conciliarism is premised upon a benign acceptance of errors, unless, that is, one happens to put into question certain matters of secular history (see: Williamson, Bishop Richard; one wonders whether Bishop Williamson, who has killed no one and who has never justified the killing of any one or of any group of people, would be accorded the kind of "mercy" given to Edward Moore Kennedy).

Pope Pius XI understood that he had a specific duty from God to warn anyone in public life that he risked the fires of Hell if he persisted until the point of his dying breath in support for the killing of innocent babies. This was a true Supernatural Act of Charity (admonishing the sinner) that stands in the contrast with Ratzinger/Benedict's blase attitude about the horror of personal sin as he imparts a "blessing" on a murderer and all his work, Barack Hussein Obama, who had no business entering into a Catholic sanctuary to deliver a "eulogy," something that is even forbidden, at least in the de jure sense, by the counterfeit church of conciliarism:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

 

This is how Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI should have spoken to Edward Moore Kennedy prior to his death. He did not do so. A true act of Mercy for the late senator prior to his death would have been to call him to public correction. This was not done. While we pray for the late senator's immortal soul, we must note with sadness the fact that he was indemnified in life and then praised after his death even though he persisted as an unreconstructed supporter of grave moral evils. This no joking matter. This is a matter of eternal life and eternal death.

 

In the seminary I was taught to speak like a lion from the pulpit — certainly there are those in the diocese who believe that perhaps I do that all too well — but that in the confessional I should be a lamb, reflecting the face of the Lamb of God, who died so that there might be mercy. The funeral rites for Senator Kennedy challenge all of us to question ourselves as to whether we are less eager to grant mercy than God Himself is.

It is so important at this time that our Catholic homes and families re-emphasize their role as schools of mercy, not at the expense of justice, and not at the expense of Truth, but recognizing that Jesus Christ gave His body to be broken and His blood to be poured out, so that there might be mercy. This is the reason for our devotion, through the inspiration of Sister Faustina and its confirmation by Pope John Paul II, to the Divine Mercy prayers, which I hope are becoming more prominent and more frequently practiced in our homes and in our parishes.

So, let our witness to mercy, which in the end was victorious on the Cross, even while justice was satisfied, resound through this diocese. This resolution of the conflict between mercy and justice could be accomplished only in and through Jesus Christ. And in this hour of hope and challenge, as Church, to be the Body of Christ, let us proclaim in word and in deed this same mystery every single day! That is your mission and mine. Someday, you and I will be in desperate need of that triumph of mercy.

I hope that your summer days have been restful and blessed. Thank you for reading this. God bless you and yours. Praised be Jesus Christ! ("Bishop" Morlino's column )

 

STOP THE MISREPRESENTATION OF WHAT CONSTITUTES THE MERCY OF GOD. There is a reason that the Catholic Church did not approve of Sister Faustina's diary and of the "Divine Mercy Chaplet," and that reason has to do with its conveying a sense of "universal salvation," something that was near and dear to heart of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, who was just as much a disciple of the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II kissed the Koran and was treated as inferior in a Talmudic synagogue and praised a voodoo witch doctor and gave joint "blessings" with Protestant "ministers" who did not have the charism of Holy Orders on their immortal souls. Approving Sister Faustina's work was vital to the apostate mind of Wojtyla/John Paul II in order to help, if ever so cleverly and pietiestically, the heresy of "universal salvation" by means of the "Divine Mercy Chaplet," which is considered by many, especially of the Catholic Pentecostalist (charismatic) bent, as something equal to the Sacrament of Penance.

We are witnesses to the authentic Mercy of the Divine Redeemer by performing the Spiritual Works of Mercy, which are:

1. Admonish the sinner

2. Instruct the ignorant

3. Counsel the doubtful

4. Comfort the sorrowful

5. Bear wrongs patiently

6. Forgive injuries

7. Pray for the living and the dead

 

Was Edward Moore Kennedy admonished by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI? No, he was not. Ratzinger/Benedict thus failed the first and most important test of true Mercy, which is to seek the conversion of a sinner away from his sins and to seek the conversion of an unbeliever to the true Faith. What, however, can we expect from a man who rejects the "ecumenism of the return," thereby spitting in the face of such true popes as Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI, among so many others, as well as blaspheming the memories of saints who gave up their lives to convert the Protestants and the Jews and the Mohammedans and the Orthodox out of their false religions that are hideous in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity?

True love for souls seeks their good, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of their immortal souls. No one can say that he loves God while he persists in sin unrepentantly, worse yet as seeks to promote sin under cover of the civil law and to promote it in every aspect of our social life. And no one can say that he loves God or the souls of others if he does anything, either by omission or commission, that reaffirms another in the promotion of those sins. It is that simple. God's Mercy is not an expression of naturalistic sentimentality.

Indeed, the late Father Frederick Faber explained that to truly love God we must hate what he hates, heresy:

The love of God brings many new instincts into the heart. Heavenly and noble as they are, they bear no resemblance to what men would call the finer and more heroic developments of character. A spiritual discernment is necessary to their right appreciation. They are so unlike the growth of earth, that they must expect to meet on earth with only suspicion, misunderstanding, and dislike. It is not easy to defend them from a controversial point of view; for our controversy is obliged to begin by begging the question, or else it would be unable so much as to state its case. The axioms of the world pass current in the world, the axioms of the gospel do not. Hence the world has its own way. It talks us down. It tries us before tribunals where our condemnation is secured beforehand. It appeals to principles which are fundamental with most men but are heresies with us. Hence its audience takes part with it against us. We are foreigners, and must pay the penalty of being so. If we are misunderstood, we had no right to reckon on any thing else, being as we are, out of our own country. We are made to be laughed at. We shall be understood in heaven. Woe to those easy-going Christians whom the world can understand, and will tolerate because it sees they have a mind to compromise!

The love of souls is one of these instincts which the love of Jesus brings into our hearts. To the world it is proselytism, there mere wish to add to a faction, one of the selfish developments of party spirit. One while the stain of lax morality is affixed to it, another while the reproach of pharisaic strictness! For what the world seems to suspect least of all in religion is consistency. But the love of souls, however apostolic, is always subordinate to love of Jesus. We love souls because of Jesus, not Jesus because of souls. Thus there are times and places when we pass from the instinct of divine love to another, from the love of souls to the hatred of heresy. This last is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. Many a convert, in whose soul God would have done grand things, goes to his grave a spiritual failure, because he would not hate heresy. The heart which feels the slightest suspicion against the hatred of heresy is not yet converted. God is far from reigning over it yet with an undivided sovereignty. The paths of higher sanctity are absolutely barred against it. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. We had, therefore, better hold our peace. If we understand God, and He understands us, it is not so very hard to go through life suspected, misunderstood and unpopular. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-loving positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is searing enough for harsh judgment. There are conversions where three-quarters of the heart stop outside the Church and only a quarter enters, and heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. But if it is hard, it has to be borne. A man can hardly have the full use of his senses who is bent on proving to the world, God's enemy, that a thorough-going Catholic hatred of heresy is a right frame of man. We might as well force a blind man to judge a question of color. Divine love inspheres in us a different circle of life, motive, and principle, which is not only not that of the world, but in direct enmity with it. From a worldly point of view, the craters in the moon are more explicable things than we Christians with our supernatural instincts. From the hatred of heresy we get to another of these instincts, the horror of sacrilege. The distress caused by profane words seems to the world but an exaggerated sentimentality. The penitential spirit of reparation which pervades the whole Church is, on its view, either a superstition or an unreality. The perfect misery which an unhallowed  touch of the Blessed Sacrament causes to the servants of God provokes either the world's anger or its derision. Men consider it either altogether absurd in itself, or at any rate out of all proportion; and, if otherwise they have proofs of our common sense, they are inclined to put down our unhappiness to sheer hypocrisy. The very fact that they do not believe as we believe removes us still further beyond the reach even of their charitable comprehension. If they do not believe in the very existence our sacred things, how they shall they judge the excesses of a soul to which these sacred things are far dearer than itself?

Now, it is important to bear all this in mind while we are considering the sixth dolor. Mary's heart was furnished, as never heart of saint was yet, yet with these three instincts regarding souls, heresy, and sacrilege. They were in her heart three grand abysses of grace, out of which arose perpetually new capabilities of suffering. Ordinarily speaking, the Passion tires us. It is a fatiguing devotion. It is necessarily so because of the strain of soul which it is every moment eliciting. So when our Lord dies a feeling of repose comes over us. For a moment we are tempted to think that our Lady's dolors ought to have ended there, and that the sixth dolor and the seventh are almost of our own creation, and that we tax our imagination in order to fill up the picture with the requisite dark shading of sorrow. But this is only one of the ways in which devotion to the dolors heightens and deepens our devotion to the Passion. It is not our imagination that we tax but our spiritual discernment. In these two last dolors we are led into greater refinements of woe, into the more abstruse delicacies of grief, because we have got to deal with a soul rendered even more wonderful than it was before by the elevations of the sorrows which have gone before. Thus, the piercing of our Lord with the spear as to our Blessed Lady by far the most awful sacrilege which it was then in man's power to perpetrate upon the earth. To break violently into the Holy of Holies in the temple, and pollute its dread sanctity with all manner of heathen defilement, would have been as nothing compared to the outrage of the adorable Body of God. It is in vain that we try to lift ourselves to a true appreciation of this horror in Mary's heart. Our love of God is wanting in keenness, our perceptions of divine things in fineness. We cannot do more than make approaches  and they are terrible enough. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 291-295.)

 

Father Faber's description of what constitutes a genuine love of God is foreign to hearts of conciliarists, starting with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who sees "good" in error (see Cardinal Ratzinger's Theology ). Catholicism and conciliarism, my friends, are two entirely different religions.

It was indeed heretical on the part of Edward Moore Kennedy (and his conciliar enablers) to believe in the falsehood of the separation of Church and State as he promoted actively and aggressively and viciously and demagogically moral evils under the cover of the civil law and as he savaged with his biting wit anyone and everyone who opposed him as a member of the "radical right," a term, "Bishop" Morlino, used in one of the "eulogies" given at Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

A subdued manner, "Bishop" Morlino? The "radical right"? Shame on you , "Bishop" Morlino, for misrepresenting and distorting a travesty replete with ideological sloganeering and the babblings of naturalistic sentimentality as somehow reflective of the Mercy of God, Who was blasphemed in that travesty from beginning to end.

One cannot remain a Catholic while supporting grave evils. Anyone who defects from the Faith in one thing, defects from It in Its entirety, as Pope Leo XIII made abundantly clear in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896:

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

 

The madness of rationalizing and misrepresenting the scandalous travesty of Edward Moore Kennedy's "Mass of Christian Burial" is just another indication of the abyss that separates the false religion of conciliarism from the true religion, Catholicism. While we must pray and make sacrifices for the conversion of the conciliar officials to the true Church as we make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our own many sins, each of which has helped to worsen the state of the Church Militant on earth and of the world-at-large, we must also flee from all contact with them as we entrust the sanctification of our own immortal souls in fear and in trembling to true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs who make no concessions to concilairism or its false, apostate officials in the slightest.

This passage from an abridged version of the Venerable Mary of Agreda's The Mystical City of God speaks very poignantly to us about these our days:

Some of the principal demons gave their answers to this dreadful proposal, encouraging Lucifer by suggesting diverse schemes for hindering the fruit of the Redemption among men. They all agreed that it was not possible to injure the person of Christ, to diminish the immense value of his merits, to destroy the efficacy of the Sacraments, to falsify or abolish the doctrine which Christ had preached; yet they resolved that, in accordance with the new order of assistance and favor established by God for the salvation of men, they should now seek new ways of hindering and preventing the work of God by so much the greater deceits and temptations. In reference to these plans some of the more astute and malicious demons said: "It is true, that men now have at their disposal a new and very powerful doctrine and law, new and efficacious Sacraments, a new Model and Instructor of virtues, a powerful intercessor and Advocate in this Woman; yet the natural inclinations and passions of the flesh remain just the same, and the sensible and delectable creatures have not changed their nature. Let us [the devils] then, making use of this situation with increased astuteness, foil as far as in us lies the effects of what this Godman has wrought for men. Let us begin strenuous warfare against mankind by suggesting new attractions, exciting them to follow their passions in forgetfulness of all else. Thus men, being taken up wit these dangerous things, cannot attend to the contrary."

Acting upon this counsel they redistributed the spheres of work among themselves, in order that each squadron of demons might, with a specialized astuteness, tempt men to different vices. They resolved to continue to propagate idolatry in the world, so that men might not come to the knowledge of the true God and the Redemption. Wherever idolatry would fail, they concluded to establish sects and heresies, for which they would select the most perverse and depraved of the human race as leaders and teachers of error. Then and there was concocted among these malignant spirits the sect of Mahomet, the heresies of Arius, Pelagius, Nestorius, whatever other heresies have been started in the world from the first ages of the Church until now, together with those which they have in readiness, but which it is neither necessary nor proper to mention here. Lucifer showed himself content with these infernal counsels as being opposed to divine truth and destructive of the very foundation of man's rescue, namely divine faith. He lavished flattering praise and high offices upon those demons, who showed themselves willing and who undertook to find the impious originators of these errors.

Some of the devils charged themselves with perverting the inclinations of children at their conception and birth; others to induce parents to be negligent in the education and instruction of their children, either through an inordinate love or aversion, and to cause a hatred of parents among the children. Some offered to create hatred between husbands and wives, to place them in in the way of adultery. or to think little of the fidelity promised to their conjugal partners. All agreed to sow among men the seeds of discord hatred and vengeance, proud and sensual thoughts, desire of riches or honors, and by suggesting sophistical reasons against all the virtues of Christ has taught: above all they intended to weaken the remembrance of his Passion and Death, of the means of salvation, and of the eternal pains of hell. By these means the demons hoped to burden all the powers and faculties of men with solicitude for earthly affairs and sensual pleasures, leaving them little time for spiritual thoughts and their own salvation.

Lucifer heard these different suggestions of the demons and answering them he said: "I am much beholden to you for your opinions: I approve of them and adopt them all; it will be easy to put them into practice with those, who do not profess the law given by this Redeemer to men, though with those who accept and embrace these laws, it will be a difficult enterprise. But against this law and against those that follow it, I intend to direct all my wrath and fury and I shall most bitterly persecute those who hear the doctrine of this Redeemer and become his disciples; against these must our most relentless battle be waged to the end of the world. In this new Church I must strive to sow my cockle (Matth. 14, 25), the ambitions, the avarice, the sensuality, and the deadly hatreds, with all the other vices of which I am the head. For if once these sins multiply and increase among the faithful, they will, with their concomitant malice and ingratitude, irritate God and justly deprive men of the helps of grace left to them by the merits of the Redeemer. If once they have thus despoiled themselves of these means of salvation, we shall have assured victory over them. We must also exert ourselves to weaken piety and all that is spiritual and divine; so that they do not realize the power of the Sacraments and receive them in moral sin, or at least without fervor and devotion. For since these Sacraments are spiritual, it is necessary to receive them with well-disposed will, in order to reap their fruits. If once they despise the medicine, they shall languish in their sickness and be les able to withstand our temptations; they will not see through our deceits, the will let the memory of their Redeemer and of the intercession of his Mother slip from their minds. Thus will their foul ingratitude make them unworthy of grace and so irritate their God and Savior, as to deprive them of his helps. In all this I wish, that all of you assist me strenuously, losing neither time nor occasion for executing my commands."

It is not possible to rehearse all the schemes of this dragon and his allies concocted at that time against the holy Church and her children, in order that these waters of Jordan might be swallowed up in his throat (Job 40, 18). It is enough to state that they spent nearly a full year after the Death of Christ in conferring and considering among themselves the state of the world up to that time and the changes wrought by Christ our God and master through his Death and after having manifested the light of his faith by so many miracles, blessings and examples of holy men. If all these labors have not sufficed to draw all men to the way of salvation, it can be easily understood, that Lucifer should have prevailed and that his wrath should be so great, as to cause us justly to say with saint John: "Woe to the earth, for satan is come down to you full of wrath and fury" But alas! that truths so infallible and so much to be dreaded and avoided by men, should in our days be blotted from the minds of mortals to the irreparable danger of the whole world! Our enemy is astute, cruel and watchful: we sleepy, lukewarm and careless! What wonder that Lucifer has intrenched himself so firmly in the world, when so many listen to him, accept and follow his deceits, so few resist him, and entirely forget the eternal death, which he so furiously and maliciously seeks to draw upon them? I beseech those, who read this, not to forget this dreadful danger. If they are not convinced of this danger through the evil condition of the world and through the evils each one experiences himself, let them at least learn of this danger by the vast and powerful remedies and helps, which the Savior thought it necessary to leave behind in his Church. For He would not have provided such antidotes if our ailment and danger of eternal death were not so great and formidable.

Words of the Queen

This close imitation and living reproduction of Christ, confronting the demons in the first children of the Church, they feared so much, that they dared not approach and they precipitously fled from the Apostles and the just ones imbued with the doctrines of my divine Son. In them were offered up to the Almighty the first fruits of grace and of Redemption. What is seen in the saints and in perfect Christians in those times, would happen in the present times with all the Catholics if they would accept grace and work with it instead of permitting it go to waste, and if they would seek the way of the Cross; for Lucifer fears it just as much now as in the times thou hast been writing of. But soon the charity, zeal and devotion in many of the faithful began to grow cold and they forgot the blessings of the Redemption; they yielded to their carnal inclinations and desires, they loved vanity and avarice, and permitted themselves to be fascinated and deceived by the false pretenses of Lucifer, obscuring the glory of their Savior and inveigling them into the meshes of their mortal enemies. This foul ingratitude has thrown the world into the present state and has encouraged the demons to rise up in their pride against God, audaciously presuming to possess themselves of all the children of Adam on account of this forgetfulness and carelessness of Catholics. They presume to plot the destruction of the whole Church by the perversion of so many who have fallen away from it; and by inducing those who are in it, to think little of it, or by hindering them form producing the fruits of the blood and death of their Redeemer. The greatest misfortune is, that many Catholics fail to recognize this great damage and do not seriously think of a remedy, although they can presume that the times of which Jesus forewarned the women of Jerusalem, have arrived: namely, those in which the sterile should be happy, and in which many would call upon the mountains and the hills to cover and fall upon them, in order not to see the devastation of wickedness cutting down the sons of perdition, the dried trees, the barren of all the fruits of virtue. (The Venerable Mary of Agreda, A Popular Abridgement of The Mystical City of God, pp. 583-588.)

 

Powerful words that are worth reading and re-reading again and again, wouldn't you say?  Let those who have the honest of spirit recognize that these words speak to us very powerfully about the situation we face now in this era of apostasy and betrayal.

What I wrote a few days ago is worth repeating here:

Pope Saint Pius X reminded us, however, that the truth is otherwise. We must pray and work for the restoration of the Catholic City, and nothing else:

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Obviously, we must build up the "Catholic City," if you will, in our own immortal souls by growing in holiness as we cooperate graces sent to us by Our Lady that have been won for us by the shedding of every single drop of her Divine Son's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. Our sins are indeed very responsible for the worsening of the state of the Church Militant on earth and thus of the world-at-large. Once again, it is important to remember that we deceive ourselves if we do not realize how hideous our own sins are in the sight of God and how we must live penitentially as the consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate to make reparation for them as our own hearts are configured more and more to the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Which was formed out of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

To this end, of course, we must pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit as we accept whatever sufferings and sacrifices and calumnies and other difficulties as the just price we must pay for our sins, keeping in mind at all times the needs of the Poor, Suffering Souls in the Church Suffering in Purgatory.

Catholics do not surrender to the exigencies of sentimentality or to the demands of a false religion, conciliarism, that has taken up with the naturalistic ethos that has brought us sentimentality as a replacement for the true Faith and thus a true way of assessing the words and actions of those who have been at war with Christ the King by means of their support for one grave evil after another under cover of law. Although we are sinners, not one whit better than anyone else, we must stand up with courage and conviction to call out cowardice and hypocrisy for what it is, begging Our Lady that our own words and actions will not prove us to cowards and hypocrites now and, most especially, at the hour of our deaths.

 

The conciliarists think that they have the luxury of misrepresenting and distorting the truths of the Catholic Faith as they add the drops of poison from Modernism to create and sustain a synthetic religion and as they profane God in a synthetic liturgy (see It's About The Faith, Not About Face). We have no such luxury at any time, especially as it comes to making sure that we do not misrepresent and distort the truth about of the state of our own souls as we accuse ourselves in a spirit of humility and contrition--and with a firm purpose of amendment--in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance every week. We must be honest about how far short we fall in the pursuit of sanctity in our interior lives in order to be ready at all times for the moment of our Particular Judgments without ever engaging in the presumption of the Lutheran strain of Protestantism and conciliarism or the despair of Albigensianism and Jansenism.

The final victory belongs to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as a result of the faithful fulfillment of her Fatima Message. May our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices and penances be used by her to help bring about this victory so that the Social Reign of her Divine Son will be restored and the likes of statist and pro-aborts such as Edward Moore Kennedy will be replaced by the fidelity of the likes of Saint Edward the Confessors, Saint Casimir, Saint Wen ceslaus, Saint Henry the Emperor, Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Canute, and, of course, Saint Louis IX, King of France, each of whom now exult from Heaven in unison:

Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

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

 

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

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.

Saint Cloud, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints