Neglected Naturalists

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Although we do eat motor home-cooked meals in our dilapidating abode, there are times, especially after a morning Mass, when we will eat breakfast at a restaurant, which gets Lucy fed more immediately than having to drive back to a campground in some instances. One of the places at which we have eaten across the nation is Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. The food, especially for breakfast, is fairly reliable and the music is less egregious than at places like Denny's, Perkin's and Village Inn, where "rock music" is played without cessation.

One of the features of the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store is the sale of replica items, each of which is now made by slave labor in Red China (prompting Lucy to say, "No more junk from Red China!" when we are in the store part of the restaurant), from my own youth in the 1950s. You want a real metal Slinky? They got it. You want a Roy Rogers lunch box? They got that at the Cracker Barrel. You want Mister Potato Head? Well, he's there occasionally, as is Mister Machine. (No, we have bought any of these "nostalgia" items.)

Another featured part of the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store is the sale of DVDs of old television programs from the 1950s and the 1960s, each of which was an exercise in pure, unadulterated naturalism, as I have noted in several commentaries on this site in the past three and one-half years (and in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos between 1996 and 2003). As this nation is founded in the belief that it is not necessary for men, either individually or collectively, to submit themselves to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church and that it is not necessary for them to have belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace to be virtuous, no less holy, an entire mythology has arisen to reaffirm Americans that they are "special," that they can do "anything they put their minds to do," that America is the "shining city set on a hill," none of which is the least bit true, of course.

Nevertheless, you see, this mythology of American self-redemptive abilities, which is of the essence of the heresy of semi-Pelagianism, has spawned all manner of stories to sustain its acceptance in the minds of American citizens, many of whom reject any mention of attempting to model their lives according to the example of the great saints raised to the altars of the Catholic Church but who are willing to follow the latest fad (crystals, pet rocks, magnets, Cabbage Patch dolls, Beanie Babies, the Hula Hoop--Art Linkletter, who is still alive, by the way, at age ninety-five, may still have some of these for sale somewhere) and the latest "self-made" celebrity. A plethora of self-help programs stressing the ability of the individual to "will" himself to do better in life have originated in this country (Dale Carnegie, twelve-step programs, New Age "inner power" programs, Norman Vincent Peale's and Robert Schuller's "power of positive thinking" programs). And this is to say nothing of the plethora of self-help political ideologies of the naturalist "left" and the naturalist "right," each of which rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King and stresses man's ability to conquer his problems solely by the use of his reason, unaided by Sanctifying Grace and the reform of his life effected thereby, or at least by the use of some religiously indifferentist, inter-denominational form of political ecumenism.

The preceding paragraph summarizes the essence of the spirit of the television programs that are for sale at the Cracker Barrel Old County Store. Although these programs were, for the most part, inoffensive in that they did not contain the sort of grossly indecent, if not pornographic and directly blasphemous material contained in what passes for television "programming" today, they were not harmless. The images these programs conveyed, no matter how well-written and produced and directed and acted they may have been, reaffirmed viewers in the mythologies of the naturalism of the self-made heroes of Americanism, men and women who were self-reliant but ever willing to teach others who were less fortunate materially how to become self-reliant and thus materially successful. Some of the programs mocked the family, portraying fathers as bumbling fools and/or or in need of correction from their wives and children. Some even made a joke out of deceit, as was the case with the way in which Lucille Ricardo lied repeatedly to her husband in order to get her "big break" in show business on I Love Lucy. The examples are endless.

Television, although morally neutral as a form of technology, is dangerous because it engenders passivity and thus an uncritical acceptance of the images being televised and the sounds being broadcast. Admitting that the radio programming of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s paved the way for the interruption of the family's routine schelude (postponing bedtimes, re-scheduling mealtimes, ending family prayer and conversation), television introduced itself into many American homes in the late-1940s and became the most important "member" of the family. Visits to the Blessed Sacrament? Participation in a Rosary Procession? Going out to assist at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena? Praying the family Rosary? Take a back seat for the "god" of television, whose primetime schedule taught us from the time of the late "Uncle Miltie" in 1948 to the present who is in charge of the American family: television.

Family problems in the situation comedies of the 1950s and early 1960s were resolve without any reference to Our Lord (that would offend Jews and other unbelievers) or to Our Lady (perish the thought!), although a few programs did have generic Christmas programs once in a while. Jackie Gleason even stepped out of his Ralph Kramden character on The Honeymooners during its sole season (1955-1956) as a half-hour series (rather than as skits of varying length on his variety show) to invite everyone the audience to join the cast in singing Silent Night following a Christmas-themed show (which was a variation of O. Henry's short-story The Gift), scenes of which were excised from the official DVD release. These were the exceptions in the world of situation comedy and drama (save for the annual repeat of Dragnet's Christmas episode, which involved a boy who stole a statue of the Baby Jesus). Apart from these few exceptions, however, television was steeped in the religious indifferentism of naturalism.

The lionizing of the frontier spirit of the American West, replete with alternating themes of individualism and naturalistic "community brotherhood," was a particular bastion of propagating naturalism in the 1950s and 1960s on television. The rough-and-tumble "man of the West" had no room in his life for religion of any kind, including the true Faith (please spare me the generic Protestantism of Dabbs Greer's Reverend Robert Alden on Little House on the Prairie, based on the stories written by the Eastern Star Mason named Laura Ingalls Wilder). Much like Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the man of the West could "make it on his own."

The Cartwrights of the Ponderosa Ranch on Bonanza had naturalistic solutions for almost everyone's problems, including finding places for all their neighbors to live. Think of it: they had different neighbors almost every week (431 episodes) over the course of fourteen years. That' a lot of problems to solve by the mere use of naturalism, let me tell you.

The spirit of naturalism and the materialistic greed it engenders was enshrined in the lyrics to the tune of the original Bonanza theme song (David Rose, who wrote most of the background music for the show, including strains that later become the basis for The High Chaparral and Little House on the Prairie themes, used his own The Big Bonanza song as the program's theme from 1970 to 1972; speaking of strains, The Maverick theme music was first heard as background music early in The Lone Ranger feature film of 1956, starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels). Take a look for yourself (and take a listen to Lorne Greene's recording of these lyrics, which was, evidently, part of an album that never belonged to my own collection of television theme music):

We chased lady luck, 'til we finally struck Bonanza. With a gun and a rope and a hat full of hope, we planted our family tree.  We got hold of a pot of gold, Bonanza. With a horse and a saddle, and a range full of cattle, how rich can a fellow be? On this land we put our brand, Cartwright is the name, fortune smiled, the day we filed the Ponderosa claim. Here in the West, we're livin' the best, Bonanza, if anyone fights any one of us, he's go a fight with me, Bonanza. Hoss and Joe and Adam know every rock and pine, no one works, fights, or eats, like those boys of mine.  Here we stand in the middle of a grand Bonanza. With a gun and a rope and a hatful of hope, we planted our family tree, we got hold of a potful of gold, Bonanza. With a houseful of friends where the rainbow ends, how rich can a fellow be? On this land we put our brand, Cartwright is the name, fortune smiled, the day we filed the Ponderosa claim.  Here in the west we're livin' the best Bonanza. With the friendliest, fightingist, loving band, that ever set foot in the promised land, and we're happier than them all. That's why we call it Bonanza...Bonanza...Bonanza... Lyrics written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Bonanza Lyrics and Theme

 

Lady luck, not God's Holy Providence. A gun and a rope and a hat full of hope, not a reliance upon the intercession of the Mother of God. A pot of gold, not a soul filled with Sanctifying Grace. A horse and a saddle, and a range full of cattle make one rich, not membership in the true Faith by virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism and frequent reception of the very Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in Holy Communion. Fortune smiled, not Our Lord. Pure, unadulterated naturalism, to the tune of 431 episodes.

The lyrics performed by Lorne Greene, Michael Landon and Dan Blocker in Bonanza's first episode in 1959 (which I watched only in reruns; we were Perry Mason fans in the Droleskey household at 39 Kings Point Road in Great Neck, New York, thank you; Bonanza was on opposite Mr. Mason on Saturday nights for its first two seasons, 1959 to 1961, meaning we never watched a single episode until is third season) are even more hideous, although they demonstrate the "Old West's" penchant for glamorizing immorality, fighting and greed:

(Little Joe) - I've got a flair for women everywhere - Bonanza! 
(Hoss) - Bonanza! (Barks and howls) 
(All three) - I'm not afraid of any pretty maid - Bonanza! Bonanza!

But when I give a kiss to any little miss
She'll learn a lot from me
(Ben) - I'm not afraid of any pretty maid -- Bonanza!
(All three) - Bonanza!
                    When I give a kiss to any little miss
                    She'll learn a lot from me

Hair of brown, hair of gold - I take what I see
We're not a one to saddle up and run - Bonanza! Bonanza!
Any one of us who starts a little fuss knows he can count on me

One for four, four for one - this we guarantee
We got a right to pick a little fight - Bonanza! Bonanza!
If anyone fights any one of us he's gotta fight with me! Bonanza Lyrics

 

Other Westerns were just as naturalistic, including the long-running Gunsmoke, which become more and more of an anthology series as it neared the end of its twenty-year run in 1975. (Johnny Carson had the following line at an Emmy Awards ceremony around 1972 or 1973: "I love Jim Arness. He's a friend of mine. However, he's getting a little long in the tooth. The way they film him getting on a horse these days is that he gets on a pony and they wait until it grows up.") No mention of, say, Father Pierre Jean De Smet, in any of these Westerns. Although, come to think of it, a Franciscan friar would make an appearance now and again in The Lone Ranger television series--and in each of the two feature films. The Lone Ranger Creed, however, is entirely naturalistic and Masonic:

I believe that to have a friend,
a man must be one.

That all men are created equal
and that everyone has within himself
the power to make this a better world.

That God put the firewood there
but that every man
must gather and light it himself.

In being prepared
physically, mentally, and morally
to fight when necessary
for that which is right.

That a man should make the most
of what equipment he has.

That 'This government,
of the people, by the people
and for the people'
shall live always.

That men should live by
the rule of what is best
for the greatest number.

That sooner or later...
somewhere...somehow...
we must settle with the world
and make payment for what we have taken.

That all things change but truth,
and that truth alone, lives on forever.

In my Creator, my country, my fellow man

 

No mention of the Redeemer and the Sanctifier here. A nice little Masonic creed, a summary of the belief that we alone have the power to make this a better world without reforming our own lives in cooperation with Sanctifying Grace.

This was true of "crime dramas,:" of course. My own beloved Ironside, which did feature religious Sisters in its two-hour pilot movie, March 28, 1967, the second episode of the second season, "Spilt Second to an Epitaph," September 26, 1968, and in the reunion movie, The Return of Ironside, May 4, 1993, portrayed the fictional retired San Francisco Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside as being able to "will" himself to overcome his paraplegia and lead an active life without feeling sorry for himself.

This could go ad infinitum, mentioning only that naturalism was one of the key themes of the Walter Disney's work (heroizing his fellow Mason Davy Crockett and other such secular, naturalistic "saints") and in cartoons, where the suggestive had long been established as "acceptable," especially in the Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s and in Rocky and Bullwinkle. (Whoever paid attention to how immodestly Natasha Fatale and other female characters, especially in fairy tales, were drawn by the cartoonists when we were children?) The point of all of this is to illustrate the fact that people who are fed a steady diet of naturalist "entertainment" fare are going to be reinforced in the naturalism that is extent in a religiously indifferent, pluralist culture.

People who waste their time (oh, can you tell that I wasted a lot of time in my life during my childhood and adolescence?) on what rots the mind, dulls the senses and detracts from the interior life of prayer come to hate any mention of objective truth, whether natural or religious, and resent even the suggestion that there is a true Faith to which each person in the whole world must belong to save his immortal soul and to know order in his own nation. That is, those who have no antidote to the poison of American television programming, having become accustomed to it over the course of nearly sixty years now, will be more inclined to think (emote, more accurately), speak and act in thoroughly naturalistic terms. Look at how many younger people's behavior has been coarsened by the vulgarities of the cartoon program called The Simpsons, an episode of which I have never watched, thank you. The idols of the moment will shape the young if the true Faith does not do so.

Although it has ever been the case in the United States of America that the allures of naturalism, which has no place for the Social Reign of Christ the King, and each of its offshoots (materialism, relativism, positivism, egalitarianism), and religious indifferentism and its offshoot, pluralism, have worked their way upon the minds and hearts of Catholics long before the advent of motion pictures or radio or television, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, offered in all of its fullness, served as something of an antidote to the pull of the world, reminding Catholics that they had to struggle against sin and the vices of the world in order to get home to Heaven. Additionally, the Catholic (or National) Legion of Decency had a great say in the enforcement of standards in the production of motion pictures in Hollywood. Producers, most of whom were, shall we say, not believers in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, knew that Catholics would obey their bishops and priests and stay away from condemned motion pictures, depriving them, the producers, of what they lived for: the Judeo-Calvinist "demigod" of profit.

This has all changed, partly as a result of cultural forces and partly as a result of conciliarism's embrace of the world. How can Catholics resist the pressures of the world when they are told from the pulpit by "priests" in perfectly good canonical standing in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that they can watch television programs and motion pictures that blaspheme Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother, that contain the crudest vulgarities and profanities imaginable, that display immorality favorably and in the most graphic of details, that, in other words, promote the very thing that caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and which caused His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be pierce through and through with Seven Swords of Sorrow: sin?  Catholic have been told by many of their conciliar "clergy" to plunge into the world, to dress like everyone else, even at what purports to be an offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Ah, herein lies the rub: the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service has enshrined the spirit of the world in the name of many false slogans (Aggiornamento, inculturation of the Gospel). A "liturgy" that becomes an egalitarian, worldly spectacle, incorporation "rock music" and other bizarre elements. is going to reaffirm people in their immersion in the world. Those who resist the world will be deemed Jansenists or Manicheans or simply crazy traditionalists who don't like to have "fun." The Novus Ordo has ended the resistance that Catholics once had to at least some elements of the popular culture that is so steeped in naturalism. The situation is so bad that a "priest" in Waco, Texas, last year appeared at a local Hooter's restaurant to bless its opening! Not a thing happened to this "priest." Not a thing. How can Catholics in the conciliar structures be expected to say out of places of immodesty and wretched "music" when their "priests" bless the joints?

The madness of incorporating elements from pagan religions and cultures into the Novus Ordo service, a madness that Saint Hyacinth would have sought to cure by calling the demons out of the conciliar churches, is so out of control that Mr. Barry Ahern, who is from Nova Scotia (Acadia), Canada, told us recently the the Indians of Acadia had to "learn" from Hollywood how to dance and pray like their pagan ancestors, having forgotten all of this false, diabolical worship over the centuries as they practiced something called the Catholic Faith in the context of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. These Indians of Acadia (and elsewhere) had to learn the long forgotten pagan ceremonies in order to incorporate them into the Novus Ordo, one of the two forms of the "one" Roman Rite, right? (Where have some people put their Catholic brains? Two forms of the one Roman Rite? Kind of makes you think that Joseph Ratzinger has sprayed some traditionally-minded Catholics with Professor Pepperwinkle's patented Anti-Memory spray from The Adventures of Superman.)

Joseph Ratzinger himself said that the "Second" Vatican Council had not only made a "reconciliation with the principles of 1789" but that it represented an end to the "ghetto mentality" of Catholics separating themselves from the world, a veritable razing of the bastions, as he wrote in Principles of Catholic Theology. Behold the rotten fruit of plunging ourselves into the world, of razing the bastions of the Church, something that Pope Pius VIII warned about quite specifically in Traditi Humilitati Nostrae, May 24, 1829:

Although God may console Us with you, We are nonetheless sad. This is due to the numberless errors and the teachings of perverse doctrines which, no longer secretly and clandestinely but openly and vigorously, attack the Catholic faith. You know how evil men have raised the standard of revolt against religion through philosophy (of which they proclaim themselves doctors) and through empty fallacies devised according to natural reason. In the first place, the Roman See is assailed and the bonds of unity are, every day, being severed. The authority of the Church is weakened and the protectors of things sacred are snatched away and held in contempt. The holy precepts are despised, the celebration of divine offices is ridiculed, and the worship of God is cursed by the sinner. All things which concern religion are relegated to the fables of old women and the superstitions of priests. Truly lions have roared in Israel. With tears We say: "Truly they have conspired against the Lord and against His Christ." Truly the impious have said: "Raze it, raze it down to its foundations."

 

This is why, ladies and gentlemen, the standards at some fully traditional Catholic schools that make no concessions to the popular culture are essential to maintain in each and every Catholic household. Pastors have the absolute right to explain to the sheep of their flocks that they must not exposes themselves and their children to that which is poisonous to their immortal souls. No canonized saint of the Catholic Church ever needed television or motion pictures or "rock" music to scale the heights of sanctity in order to get home to Heaven. Do we want our children to be holy or do we want them to be considered "normal" by our neighbors? Holiness and contemporary television programming are mutually incompatible. Indeed, the seed ground was laid for television's almost complete iron grip over the lives of most Catholics today, including so many who go to sedevacantist chapels, mind you, by the way in which so many people, including my own parents, accepted its presence uncritically and thus taught their children to be passive receptors of what the organized forces of naturalism (Judeo-Masonry) wanted to convince us to believe (and to convince us to buy the commercial products advertised on their programs).

One can contrast America's spirit of naturalism as it is exalted in the American media with the spirit of Catholicism exhibited by the great Catholic missionaries who came to this land to convert souls to the true Faith. Two examples will suffice to illustrate this contrast.

One cannot deny the fact that those, for example, who crossed the Rocky Mountains in search of gold during the "Gold Rush" of the late-1840s in California had great natural courage. They had to brave elements of wind and snow and mountainous terrain (and snakes and wild beasts) to get across the Rockies to California to pan for gold. But to do what? So that they could take riches out of the earth so as to make themselves rich in this life as an ultimate, defining end of their lives.

Father Junipero Serra, O.F.M., walked up from Baja California with a bad leg to establish missions up and down what is now the State of California. He sought to give of the spiritual riches that God had given him so as to make others rich unto eternity. The aforementioned Father Pierre Jean De Smet, S.J., and his other "Black Robes" did the same. So did Sister Rose Philippine Duchesne.

God did not create us to pan for gold. He did not create us or die on the Cross for us so that we would waste our lives watching television or engaged in endless recreational activities. He did not create us or redeem us to have us believe that we do not speak about the Faith in public or to promote the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen at every opportunity imaginable. He did not create or redeem us to look at the world naturalistically, believing in our alleged powers and strategies and plans and methodologies as the way to "resolve" problems that can be ameliorated only by the reform of individual lives in cooperation with Sanctifying Grace.

God created us to get home to Him in Heaven through the one and only shining city set on a hill, the Catholic Church. We are here to live in such a way so that we will be ready to die at any moment and thus to face our Particular Judgments. We are called to supernaturalize every moment of our lives and to invite others to do so.

This work is not for the weak of heart. This work is for those who trust completely in the intercessory power of the Mother of God. Do you trust her? Do you believe that she who made possible our very redemption can help you in your most difficult situations at home or at work? Do you believe that she who has been Assumed into Heaven and who has manifested devotion to her Immaculate Heart as the path to world peace lacks anything from her Divine Son to bring about the Resurrection of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth and thus the restoration of Christendom itself?

Have confidence in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, therefore. Pray your Rosaries every day, praying them well. Wear your Miraculous Medal and your Brown Scapular. Carry plenty of Green Scapulars and Rosaries and Rosary instruction booklets to pass out to others. Combat naturalism with Catholicism, making sure that you do not participate in the political and cultural lies spewed forth by the naturalists, who mean to lull you to sleep in order to convince you that the Faith does not apply at all times and in all circumstances, even in the realm of politics and economics. After all, we have to be "realistic." The only who is realistic, however, is one who is looking at the world through the eyes of the true Faith and thus rejects all forms of naturalism, including the heresy of Americanism, which is species of Modernism, the synthesis of all heresies.

May we rely upon Our Lady's help, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, to rise above the muck and the mythologies of naturalism, giving to her Divine Son's Most Sacred Heart through her own Immaculate Heart our daily prayers and penances and mortifications and humiliations, thereby helping to plant the seeds when the hearts and lips of all men here and around the world will exclaim:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and the hour of our death. Amen.

 

Our Lady of Fatima, 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.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.

Saints Monica, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.