by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Although it was my intention to complete an article on a different subject for posting today, events have made this brief article useful to undertake. I promise not to detain you for too terribly long.
The President of Georgetown University, the first Catholic college in the United States of America and long a den of Americanism whose officials are proud to bast that the school had graduated one William Jefferson Blythe Clinton in 1968 with his undergraduate degree and kept the hideous pro-abort named Father Robert Drinan on the faculty at its law school from 1981 to his death on January 28, 2007, Dr. John J. DiGioia, has posted an "open" letter to the "community" of Georgetown University to lend his support to a student at the George University Law Center, Sandra Fluke, who testified before an unofficial hearing, called by Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives, to oppose Republican efforts to repeal President Barack Hussein Obama's (aka Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus) fiat of a mandate requiring all employers, including those associated with the counterfeit church of conciliarism to provide health insurance coverage for "contraceptive services."
Miss Fluke, who is unmarried, presented a tale of woe as to how she could not afford the $3,000 that she says it costs her to pay for contraception at a time that she is enrolled in the Georgetown Law Center. It was a nice tale of woe from a thirty-year old woman who has been a "women's right's advocate" for some time now and who enrolled at the Georgetown Law Center specifically to challenge the university's refusal to provide health insurance coverage for contraception:
Sandra Fluke’s professional background in domestic violence and human
trafficking began with Sanctuary for Families in New York City. There,
she launched the agency’s pilot Program Evaluation Initiative. While at
Sanctuary, she co-founded the New York Statewide Coalition for Fair
Access to Family Court, which after a twenty-year stalemate,
successfully advocated for legislation granting access to civil orders
of protection for unmarried victims of domestic violence, including
LGBTQ victims and teens. Sandra was also a member of the Manhattan
Borough President’s Taskforce on Domestic Violence and numerous other
New York City and New York State coalitions that successfully advocated
for policy improvements impacting victims of domestic violence.
As the 2010 recipient of the Women Lawyers Association of Los
Angeles Fran Kandel Public Interest Grant, she researched, wrote, and
produced an instructional film on how to apply for a domestic violence
restraining order in pro per. She has also interned with the Coalition
to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking; Polaris Project; Neighborhood
Legal Services of Los Angeles County; Break the Cycle; the Domestic
Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project; NOW Legal Defense and
Education Fund; Crime Victim and Sexual Assault Services; and the Human
Services Coalition of Tompkins County.
Through Georgetown’s clinic programs, Sandra has proposed
legislation based on fact-finding in Kenya regarding child trafficking
for domestic work, and has represented victims of domestic violence in
protection order cases. Sandra is the Development Editor of the Journal
of Gender and the Law, and served as the President of Law Students for
Reproductive Justice, and the Vice President of the Women’s Legal
Alliance. In her first year, she also co-founded a campus committee
addressing human trafficking. Cornell University awarded her a B. S. in
Policy Analysis & Management, as well as Feminist, Gender, &
Sexuality Studies in 2003. (Current Public Interest Law Scholars at Georgetown Law Center.)
Miss Fluke is no innocent waif. She has been trained to be a professional agitator in behalf of the slaughter of innocent babies in their mothers' wombs, whether by chemical or surgical means, and she was selected specifically by House Minority Leader Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi (D-California) to testify before a rump committee composed of House Democrats when Republicans said that the request to have her testify at the official hearing, held a week before, was received too late to schedule her, something that the Democrats deny. Fluke's appearance was done solely for the sake of fund-raising for the Democrats and for the advocacy groups that live to create controversies in order to solicit for funds themselves, whether by e-mail (or the "social media") or internet postings or by direct mailings to the members of their extensive lists.
This matter has received considerable attention, rising to the level of Caesar Obamas Barackus Ignoramus himself, because radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh referred to Sandra Fluke in his radio program on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, by the use of an unfortunate adjective that clouded the stronger picture that could have been presented more clearly and cleanly by simply calling her what she is: a professional agitator in behalf of contraception. Delicacy of words is not Mr. Limbaugh's strong suit as he, one who has training at all in First and Last Things, has not refrained from being graphically explicit over the air in his reference matters pertaining to Holy Purity. A naturalist, of course, has no understanding of the virtue of purity and of maintaining modesty in one's speech. It would do Mr. Limbaugh well to consider these words of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori:
3. ”The stroke of a whip," says Ecclesiasticus,
"maketh a blue mark; but the stroke of a tongue will break the bones."
(Eccl. xxviii. 21.) The wounds of the lash are wounds of the flesh, but
the wounds of the obscene tongue are wounds which infect the bones of
those who listen to its language. St. Bernardino of Sienna
relates, that a virgin who led a holy life, at hearing an obscene word
from a young man, fell into a bad thought, and afterwards abandoned
herself to the vice of impurity to such a degree that, the saint says,
if the devil had taken human flesh, he could not have committed so many
sins of that kind as she committed.
4. The misfortune is, that the mouths of hell that
frequently utter immodest words, regard them, as trifles, and are
careless about confessing them: and when rebuked for them they answer:
”I say these words in jest, and without malice." In jest! Unhappy
man, these jests make the devil laugh, and shall make you weep for
eternity in hell. In the first place, it is useless to say that you
utter such words without malice; for, when you use such expressions, it
is very difficult for you to abstain from acts against purity. According
to St. Jerome, ”He that delights in words is not far from the act. ”
Besides, immodest words spoken before persons of a different sex, are
always accompanied with sinful complacency. And is not the scandal you
give to others criminal? Utter a single obscene word, and you shall
bring into sin all who listen to you. Such is the doctrine of St.
Bernard. ”One speaks, and he utters only one word; but he kills the
souls of a multitude of hearers." (Serm. xxiv., in Cant.) A greater sin
than if, by one discharge of a blunderbuss, you murdered many persons;
because you would then only kill their bodies: but, by speaking
obscenely, you have killed their souls. (Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Full Sermon on the Vice of Speaking Immodestly. For the audio version of this sermon recorded by this writer in the summer of 2008, please click on
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost: On The Vice Of Speaking Immodestly.)
That having been noted, however, the point that Limbaugh tried to make in his broadcast three days ago, according to the press reports that I have read is that Sandra Fluke wants the taxpayers to fund her ability to engage in natural sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments without having any fear of the "consequences" of such sins. Obviously, that is my own characterization of Limbaugh's argument. However, Limbaugh's point is inarguable: Sandra Fluke has no right to expect American taxpayers to fund her ability to engage in the use of the generative powers, whose proper use is reserved by God Himself to the married state for the procreation and education of children, at any time without the worry of conceiving the natural fruit of the generative powers, a baby, whose immortal soul is made in the image and likeness of God and whose body has a Deoxyribonucleic acid genetic code of its very own from the first moment of its fertilization.
Truth be told, of course, the mere fact that Rush Limbaugh criticized Sandra Fluke and her testimony at all would have been used as a means to generate funds for the Democrats and their associated advocacy groups that coexist in a symbiotic relationship even absent the use of the word that he used to describe her. That word, though, is simply a distraction from the even greater significance of this matter: that it would have been unthinkable for a law school on the campus of a Catholic university would tolerate for one moment a student's public confession to a life of impurity as such would have been considered a character disqualification to be in attendance at the school (and such behavior years ago, if attested to by documentary evidence, might have resulted in one's not being admitted to the bar in a particular state on the ground of a lack of moral fitness).
Obviously, as I noted repeatedly during my thirty year college teaching career and have noted throughout the course of my writing and speaking, it is one thing to sin and to seek out the ineffable Mercy of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. Each of us is a sinner, wounded by the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect and the weakened will) and by the effects of our Actual Sins. Some people may struggle for very long periods in their lives with sins of impurity. No one is condemning those who have had such struggles. Catholics do not do this as this imitate Our Divine Redeemer, Who told Saint Mary Magdalene the following when she was caught in the sin of adultery:
And Jesus went unto mount Olivet. And early in the
morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him,
and sitting down he taught them. And the scribes and the Pharisees
bring unto him a woman taken in adultery: and they set her in the midst,
And said to him: Master, this woman was even now taken in adultery.
Now Moses in the law commanded us to stone such a one. But what sayest
thou?
And this they said tempting him, that
they might accuse him. But Jesus bowing himself down, wrote with his
finger on the ground. When therefore they continued asking him, he
lifted up himself, and said to them: He that is without sin among you,
let him first cast a stone at her. And again stooping down, he wrote on
the ground. But they hearing this, went out one by one, beginning at
the eldest. And Jesus alone remained, and the woman standing in the
midst. Then Jesus lifting up himself, said to her: Woman, where are they
that accused thee? Hath no man condemned thee?
Who said: No man, Lord. And Jesus said: Neither will I condemn thee. Go, and now sin no more. (Jn. 8: 1-11)
The Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation did not reaffirm his friend, Saint Mary Magdalene, in her sin of adultery. He did not blame the sin on her parents or her sister Saint Mary or her brother, Saint Lazarus. He did not blame the sin on her parents or the "community" or the Pharisees who were preparing to stone her as He wrote their sins on the ground (which, as far as we know, is the only time that Our Lord wrote), prompting them to cast their stones on the ground and to walk away. Our Lord did not tell her to seek public funding from the Roman treasury for her sins. He did not tell her that she should follow her desires to sin. He did not engage her in any kind of debate or discussion. After telling her that He did not condemn her, He said, "Go, and now sin no more."
Sandra Fluke wants us to pay for her sins against Holy Purity. It is that simple.
Ah, it is not so simple to Dr. John J. DiGioia, the President of Georgetown University, who wrote has posted the following "open letter" to the Georgetown "community:"
There is a legitimate question of public policy before our nation
today. In the effort to address the problem of the nearly fifty million
Americans who lack health insurance, our lawmakers enacted legislation
that seeks to increase access to health care. In recent weeks, a
question regarding the breadth of services that will be covered has
focused significant public attention on the issue of contraceptive
coverage. Many, including the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, have offered important perspectives on this issue.
In recent days, a law student of Georgetown, Sandra Fluke, offered
her testimony regarding the proposed regulations by the Department of
Health and Human Services before a group of members of Congress. She
was respectful, sincere, and spoke with conviction. She provided a
model of civil discourse. This expression of conscience was in the
tradition of the deepest values we share as a people. One need not agree
with her substantive position to support her right to respectful free
expression. And yet, some of those who disagreed with her position –
including Rush Limbaugh and commentators throughout the blogosphere and
in various other media channels – responded with behavior that can only
be described as misogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the
position of our student.
In our vibrant and diverse society, there always are important
differences that need to be debated, with strong and legitimate beliefs
held on all sides of challenging issues. The greatest contribution of
the American project is the recognition that together, we can rely on
civil discourse to engage the tensions that characterize these difficult
issues, and work towards resolutions that balance deeply held and
different perspectives. We have learned through painful experience that
we must respect one another and we acknowledge that the best way to
confront our differences is through constructive public debate. At
times, the exercise of one person’s freedom may conflict with
another’s. As Americans, we accept that the only answer to our
differences is further engagement.
In an earlier time, St. Augustine captured the sense of what is
required in civil discourse: "Let us, on both sides, lay aside all
arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already
discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is
known to neither of us. For then only may we seek it, lovingly and
tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already
discovered and possessed."
If we, instead, allow coarseness, anger – even hatred – to stand for
civil discourse in America, we violate the sacred trust that has been
handed down through the generations beginning with our Founders. The
values that hold us together as a people require nothing less than
eternal vigilance. This is our moment to stand for the values of
civility in our engagement with one another. Sincerely, John J. DeGioia, President, Georgetown University. (A Message to the Georgetown Community on Civility and Public Discourse.)
John J. DiGioia, you are without a scintilla of understanding the horror of personal sin.
Here are some questions for you, Dr. DiGioia (who is six years my junior):
1) Is the nationalization of health-care represented by the "Affordable Care Act of 2010" a violation of the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity, to say nothing of the precepts of the Constitution of the United States of America?
2) What is "legitimate" about "debating" that which no one has the right to use, contraception?
3) Leaving aside, of course, their bogus arguments about "religious liberty" and the inconvenient little fact that most of them have never preached against contraception from the pulpit or have cared all that much as "Catholic" hospitals have distributed "morning after pills" and as supposedly "Catholic" educational institutions and their very own priests/presbyters have informed Catholics that they can use contraceptives as a matter of "good conscience," why do you dismiss the objections of some of the conciliar "bishops" to the insurance mandate for contraception as simply being their "perspective," thereby implying that other being have "perspectives" that need to be "heard" in support of such coverage,
4) How is not Miss Fluke's "expression of conscience" before a rump committee, convened solely for the purposes of public agitation and fund-raising, an indication that her conscience is misinformed and that by speaking as she has only confuses souls by the use of emotionally-laded arguments that are meant to deflect from the simple reality that you, as a supposed Catholic, are supposed to recognize and respect: that the use of contraceptives is a violation of Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage?
5) Although one can disagree with the specific adjective used by Rush Limbaugh to describe Miss Fluke, how did she not place herself in a position of public criticism and ridicule by demanding that the taxpayers of the United States of America fund her wanton behavior by the commission of "consequence-free" sins against the binding, immutable precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments?
6) "Constructive debate"? Please explain how matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are subject to any kind of debate, "constructive" or otherwise?
7) You have quoted Saint Augustine on the search for truth. Is the truth about Miss Fluke's personal behavior and her use of contraceptives not immoral, objectively speaking, leaving all subjective judgment to God, Who alone knows the subjective state and thus the culpability of individuals souls, in se not known? What is there to "search" for on this matter?
8) Are you familiar at all with Saint Augustine's injunction that ""But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error?" Do you believe that Saint Augustine was wrong?
9) Was Pope Gregory XVI wrong when, after quoting Saint Augustine, explained the social consequences of the spread of error in the name of "liberty of conscience"? If so, please explain how any of this is incorrect?
When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the
narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil,
propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which
John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which
locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation
of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws
-- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other.
Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for
wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil,
namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire
for novelty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
10) Was it not the case years ago that one who expressed public support for the misuse of the generative powers that God has given man for the continuation of the species would have been dismissed from Georgetown University as an undesirable student who lacked the moral character to be admitted to the bar?
11) How is Miss Fluke to be admired in any way given the fact that she offends God, wounds her own immortal soul and thus wounds the Church Militant and society itself by her behavior?
12) Are not the the following words of Silvio Cardinal Antoniano proof that your belief that there we need a "constructive debate" on this mater nothing other than an exercise in self-serving pandering to feminist groups and to your fellow theological "dissenters" in what you think is the Catholic Church?
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. (quoted in Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)
Well, Dr. DiGioia, you've had enough time. Give me your answers.
Speechless? Consider these words of Pope Pius XI that apply to the pro-abortion "Catholic," Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi, who invited Sandra Fluke to play her role as a fund-raising tool for the Democratic Party and its related fund-raising advocacy groups:
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 30, 1930.)
Disagree, Dr. DiGioia? You do so at your own peril, that of the loss of your own immortal soul for all eternity.
Sandra Fluke's appearance before a rump committee of pro-death House Democrats was not a fluke. It was a deliberate act of professional procreation, one that our reigning caesar himself has used for his own purposes (see Obama Backs Student in Furor With Limbaugh).
Each of us is a sinner. Each of us, some far more than others, this writer especially included, have much reparation to make to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our sins and for those of the whole world.
With Our Lady as our sure guide and intercessor, may we indeed be ever earnest about making reparation for our own many sins, each of which has contributed to the worsening of the state of the Church Militant here on earth and of the world-at-large. Once again, make no mistake about it: our own sins and our ingratitude and our lukewarmness have exacerbated, that is, worsened, the state of the Church Militant on earth. We cannot be content to wallow in spiritual mediocrity. We must accept whatever penances and humiliations that God chooses to send us so that we can give them back to His Most Sacred Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother as her consecrated slaves, especially by means of praying as many Rosaries as our states-in-life permit.
Our Lady stands by the tomb of her Divine Son, Who has been buried mystically by the conciliarists' contempt for the truths that He has revealed exclusively through His Catholic Church and have been taught infallibly by her without any hint or shadow of change from Pentecost Sunday. We must keep her company at that tomb in our prayers, being ever willing to take on more penances and to renounce our own comfort and convenience and all attachment to human respect in order to help to usher in the day when the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will make it possible for the enemies of her Divine Son in the modern world and in the grips of Modernism will be vanquished, permitting the restoration of all things in Christ the King as we honor her as our Immaculate Queen, especially today by our reception of Holy Communion and our fulfillment of the other devotions associated with the First Saturday of every month.
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
