No Honor Among Naturalists And Other Thieves
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
One of the sources of constant bemusement to me is the way in which those who are steeped in the heresies of Americanism, whether they be found in the quarters of the counterfeit church of conciliarism or in fully traditional Catholic venues where no de jure concessions are made to conciliarism, castigate those of us who see to remind them that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order for being "unrealistic" about the world even though they, who profess to be "realists," fail to recognize that one can never retard naturalism with naturalism, that we must refer all things at all times to the greater honor and glory of God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church. Those steeped in the lies of Americanism, which exalts the natural over the supernatural, as Pope Leo XIII explained in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, reject even the simplest reminder of the simple truth that there can be no true social reform without the true religion, Catholicism:
Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
A nation whose institutions are founded in the false, anti-Incarnational principles of naturalism must degenerate over the course of time into a situation where the civil law is used as a cloak for malice and where popular culture abounds in vulgarity and actual sacrilege. Its civic leaders will be, at least for the most part, men who suffer from a moral myopia born of the falsehoods of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, concerned about themselves and their own acquisition and retention of power. The men who seek office today are no different than the men sought office one hundred sixty-four years ago when Orestes Brownson described the obsession of Americans with material wealth and success as the standards of human success and the true measure of a nation's "greatness:"
What, then, is true national greatness? We answer, that nation is greatest in which man may most easily and effectually fulfil the true and proper end of man. The nation, under the point of view we here consider the subject, is in the people. Its greatness must, then, be in the greatness of the people. The people are a collection or aggregation of individuals, and their greatness taken collectively is simply their greatness taken individually. Consequently the greatness of a nation is the greatness of the individuals that compose it. The question of national greatness resolves itself, therefore, into the question of individual greatness. The greatness of the individual consists in his fulfilling the great ends of his existence, the ends for which Almighty God made him and placed him here. No man is truly great who neglects life's great ends, nor can one be said in truth to approach greatness any further than he fulfils them.
In order, then, to determine in what true national greatness consists, we must determine in what consists true individual greatness; and in order to determine in what true individual greatness consists, we must determine what is the true end of man; that is, what is the end to which Almighty God has appointed man, and which he is while here to labor to secure. What, then, is the end of man? For what has our Maker placed us here? To what has he bidden us aspire? Were we placed here merely to be born and to die,-to live for a moment, continue our species, toil, suffer, drop into the grave to rot, and be no more for ever? If this be our end, true greatness will consist in living for this life only, and in being great in that which pertains to this life. The greatest man will be he who succeeds best in amassing the goods of this world, in securing its honors and luxuries, or simply in multiplying for himself the means of sensual enjoyment. In a word, the greatest man will be he who most abounds in wealth and luxury.
We mean not to say, that, in point of fact, wealth and luxury, worldly honors and sensual gratifications, are the chief goods of even this life; but simply that they would be, if this were our only life, if our destiny were a destiny to be accomplished in this world. It is because this world is not our home, because we are merely travellers through it, and our destination is a world beyond it, that the life of justice and sanctity yields us even here our truest and most substantial pleasure. But confine man to this life, let it be true that he has no destiny beyond it, and nothing could, relatively to him, be called great or good, not included under the heads of wealth and luxury. Nothing could be counted or conceived of as of the least value to him that does not directly or indirectly minister to his sensual enjoyment. No infidel moralist has ever been able, without going out of his own system, or want of system, to conceive of any thing higher, nobler, more valuable, than sensual pleasure.
But this life is not our only life, and our destiny is not accomplished here. The grave is not our final doom; this world is not our home; we were not created for this world alone; and there is for us a life beyond this life. But even this, if we stop with it, does not answer our question. We may conceive of a future life as the simple continuation of our present natural life, and such the future life is conceived to be by not a few among us, who nevertheless flatter themselves that they are firm believers in the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. Every being may be said to have a natural destiny or end, which its nature is fitted and intended to gain. The Creator, in creating a being with a given nature, has given that being a pledge of the means and conditions of fulfilling it, of attaining to its natural end. Man has evidently been created with a nature that does not and cannot find its complete fulfilment in this life. He has a natural capacity for more than is actually attainable here. In this capacity he has the promise or pledge of his Maker that he shall live again.
The promises of God cannot fail. Man therefore must and will live again. But this is only the pledge, so to speak, of a natural immortality, and reveals to us only a natural destiny. It is only a continuation of our natural life in another world. The end we are to labor for, and the means we are to adopt to gain it, must be precisely what they would be in case our life were to terminate at the grave. Our future life being still a natural life, what is wisest and best for that portion we are now living would be wisest and best for that portion we are hereafter to live. Hence, what is wisest and best for time would be wisest and best for eternity.
Hence it is that we find so many who, though professing belief in a future life, judge all things as if this life were our only life. They look to the future life only as the continuation of the present, and expect from it only the completion of their natural destiny. They agree in all their moral judgments, in all their estimates of the worth of things or of actions, with those who believe in no future life at all. They profess to hope for a future life, but live only for time; because their future life is to be only a continuation of time. Hence they say, as we ourselves were for years accustomed to say, He who lives wisely for time lives wisely for eternity; create a heaven here, and you will have done your best to secure your title to a heaven hereafter.
Hence it is that the morality of many who profess to be Christians is the same which is adopted and defended by infidels. This is so obviously the case, that we not unfrequently find men who call themselves Christians commending downright unbelievers in Christianity as good moral men, and who see no reason why the morality of the infidel should not be the same in kind as the morality of the Christian. Hence it is supposed that morality may be taught in our schools, without teaching any peculiar or distinctive doctrine of Christianity. Morality, we are told, is independent of religion, and not a few regard it as sufficient without religion. So common has this mode of thinking and speaking become amongst us, that we heard the other day a tolerably intelligent Catholic, who would by no means admit himself to be deficient in the understanding or practice of his Catholic duties, say, that, if a man were only a good moral man, he did not care what was his distinctive religious belief. Many who go further, and contend that religion is necessary to morality, contend for its necessity only as a sort of police establishment. It is necessary, be cause the natural sanctions of the moral law are not quite sufficient to secure obedience, and religion must be called in by its hopes and fears to strengthen them.
Now all this is perfectly consistent and right, if it be true that man has only a natural destiny. We ought, in such a case, to judge all things which concern us precisely as if this were our only life. Religion could be of no value further than it strengthened the police, kept people from picking one another's pockets or cutting one another's throats. But man's destiny is not natural, but supernatural. Almighty God created him with a specific nature, but not for an end in the order of that nature, or to be attained by its simple fulfilment. He created him to his own image and likeness, but appointed him to a supernatural destiny,-to an end above what is attainable by the fulfilment of his nature,- to an end not promised in his nature, and which is not be stowed as the reward of fulfilling it. This end is to know and love God; but in a sense far higher than we can know and love him by our natural powers, and as he is now beheld through a glass, darkly, or seen dimly through the medium of his works, as we see the cause in the effect. It is to see him face to face, and to know and love him with a knowledge and love the same in kind, though not in degree, with which God knows and loves himself ;-this is the end for which man was intended, and which it is made his duty and his high privilege to seek. But this end surpasses the utmost capacity of our nature, and requires not only a supernatural revelation of God, but the supernatural elevation of our nature itself. It consists in our being made partakers of the divine nature in an ineffable sense, and in a sense above that in which we partake of it in being created after the image and likeness of God. Hence, St. Peter says, "By whom [Jesus Christ] he hath given us very great and precious promises, that by these you may be made partakers of his divine nature." So also St. John :-" We are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; because we shall see him as he is."
This fact in these times is overlooked. Men have wished to rationalize the Gospel, to find a philosophic basis for the mysteries of faith. In attempting this, they have labored to bring the whole of divine revelation, within the domain of reason, and have been led to exclude, as no part of it whatever they found themselves unable to bring within that domain. Reason is necessarily restricted to the order of nature, and can in no instance, of itself, go out of that order. Hence, revelation has come very widely to be regarded as only a republication of the natural law, as at best 'only a running commentary on it, designed simply to explain the natural order, and not to reveal any thing above it.
Men who claim to be Christians, and even ministers of the Gospel, everywhere abound, who have no faith in the supernatural order, scarcely a conception of it. We spent nearly two hours the other day trying to enable a Protestant minister, and him by no means a weak or ignorant one, even to conceive of the supernatural; but in vain. So perverted had his mind become by the false theologies of modern times, that he could attach no meaning to the assertion, "There is a supernatural order." He could use the word supernatural, but it had no meaning for his mind not within the order of nature. Thousands are in the same sad condition. To them nature is all, and all is nature. Indeed, the word nature itself has no definite meaning for them. If a man by a word raise the dead, it is natural; if Moses smite the rock and living waters gush forth, it is natural,-all by a natural power, a natural law. Travelling in the same direction, they lose themselves in a wilderness of absurdities.
Natural laws cease to be laws imposed on nature, laws she must obey, and from which she cannot withdraw herself, and become forces, agents, creators. It is not strange, then that they lose sight of the supernatural destiny of man, and look only for a natura1 destiny, to be obtained not as a reward for obedience to grace, but as the natural consequence of the cultivation or development of our natural powers. Read the writings of the celebrated Dr. Channing, or of the school which he founded or to which he was attached, and you shall never find a single recognition of the supernatural order, properly so called,-any allusion to a supernatural destiny. The highest end you will find presented is that to which we may attain by the unfolding of our higher nature, of our natural sentiments of love and reverence. The school goes so far as to contend that our nature is susceptible of an unbounded good, and that our natural sentiments of love and reverence are capable of an infinite expansion. Yet these are rational Christians, and they boast of their reason! They talk of the absurdities of Catholic theology, and see no absurdity in supposing that a finite nature may be infinitely expanded, or that a nature can be something more than it is without any thing super-natural.
But this by the way. The true end for which man is to live is the supernatural end to which we are appointed, the beatitude which God hath promised to all that love and serve him here. His true end is not the fulfilment of nature, but what the sacred Scriptures term "eternal life"; and "This is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." We cannot know God, without loving him. Hence we say, the end of man is to know and love God. But to know him intuitively, as he knows himself; for we are to see him as he is, -not as he appears through the medium of his works, but as he is in himself. We cannot thus know him naturally, for thus to know him exceeds the power of the highest possible created intelligence. We must be like him, before we can see him as he is,-be made, in a supernatural sense, partakers of his divine nature. To know him intuitively as he is in himself, is, however, the glorious destiny to which we are appointed, and to which we may attain, if we will. A more glorious destiny we cannot desire. In it we possess God himself, who is the sovereign good. Even here we find our highest good in knowing the truth and loving goodness, dim as is our view of the one, and feeble as is our hold of the other. What must it be, then, when we come to behold, by the light of glory, our God face to face, with no cloud intervening to obscure his infinite beauty, no distance between us and his ineffable love? Well may it be said, "Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what our God hath prepared for them that love him." He will reward them with no inferior, no created good; but will give them himself, will himself be their portion for ever.
But this supernatural destiny, since it is supernatural, is not naturally attainable. We may cultivate all our natural powers, we may fill up the highest and broadest capacities of our nature, realize the highest ideal, and yet be infinitely, -we use the word in its strict sense,-infinitely below it. It is not attained to by "self-culture," by the development and exercise of our highest natural powers, including even the boasted sentiments of love and reverence. It is nothing that is due, or ever can be due, to our nature. It is a gift, and can be obtained only as bestowed. But it will be bestowed only on the obedient, and is bestowed as the reward of obedience. Our destiny is eternal life, and the condition of obtaining it is obedience. Obedience is not, as some of the sects teach, the end for which we were made. We were made not that we might obey God, but that we might possess God, and we obey him as the condition of possessing him. (National Greatness)
Our Lady, to whom Orestes Brownson was singularly devoted, explaining in an essay the social effects of devotion her (Moral nd Social Influence of Devotion to Mary), showed great graces upon this convert to Catholicism, who seemed to have absorbed the entirety of the Church's Social Teaching at the moment of his conversion to the Faith in 1844. Brownson's understanding that the true measure of national greatness is the measure by which a citizenry advances in sanctity and is thus better to able to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity, was, of course but a precise summary of the Church's teaching, expressed very succinctly by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
Men who do not understand or accept this simple statement will live their entire lives steeped in a pursuit of earthly pleasures and wealth and success that will never make them happy. They will scheme and plot to get ahead of other men in this world without a moment's thought as to the Particular Judgment that will be rendered upon their soul by Christ the King at the moment of their deaths. They will speak in utterly profane and even blasphemous terms as they disparage each other as it suits their purposes to do so. The only thing that matters to the high priests of naturalism is their own self-importance, their own campaign war chests, their own ability to influence policy and key appointments so as to maintain their places in positions of power.
Obviously, fallen human nature inclined the courtiers who served Catholic kings and emperors during the Middle Ages to joust with each other for positions of influence and power. Some kings and emperors made war upon Holy Mother Church. True. There were, however, always those exemplars of the Social Reign of Christ the King who, despite their own faults and failings, sought to pursue justice in the temporal realm in light of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had entrusted to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. And even some of the mediocre and even rotten apples who served in some capacity or another in civil government during the Middle Ages understood their mortality, possessing at least a remote sense that it might be somewhat important to make a good confession of their sins before they died.
Pope Pius XII wrote in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939, about the tempering of the imperfections of men during the Middle Ages by their possessing at least some sense of the Catholic faith:
It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality.
Such a sense is entirely lacking in a world of naturalism whose grip on men has been furthered in the past four decades by concilairism's own "reconciliation" with its false principles, to say nothing of conciliarism's de facto embrace of the heresy of "universal salvation," leading so many to believe in the life of Martin Luther, namely, that there is little that one can do to lose his salvation as long as he has made some kind of "profession of faith" in his heart and with his lips. A world where men either do not believe in eternal life or that "everyone goes to Heaven" is a world where amorality and practical atheism will reign supreme as the lowest common denominators of personal behavior and of social policy.
Thus it is that our own system, whose specific institutional arrangements are not objectionable but whose foundational premises make no room for the Catholic Church and the exercise of the Social Reign of Christ the King, relying upon man's ability to govern and better himself without the Deposit Faith and without the helps provided by Sanctifying Grace, produces, as Orestes Brownson himself recognized, petty men devoid of any understand of their own eternal destiny as human beings, no less of what constitutes true national greatness, petty men who are incapable of recognizing that
Catholicity is necessary to sustain popular liberty.
Behold how the petty men of today, naturalists each, have no honor amongst themselves as they steal our own taxpayers' dollars to reward their campaign donors with "stimulus money" and a they steal from God what belongs to Him, Sovereignty over the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law:
The relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden grew so strained during the 2008 campaign, according to a new book, that the two rarely spoke and aides not only kept Biden off internal conference calls but refused to even tell him they existed.
Instead, a separate campaign call was regularly scheduled between the then-Delaware senator and two of Obama’s top campaign aides – “so that they could keep a tight rein on him,” write journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in “Game Change,” a long-awaited account of the 2008 campaign.
The book, based on over 300 interviews, reveals a series of previously undisclosed stories about the epic race. POLITICO obtained it Saturday at a Washington bookstore.
In addition to the discord between the president and vice-president, the authors write:
–Before the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, party strategists Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald, both then working for Sen. Joe Lieberman’s presidential candidacy, met secretly with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and a group of her closest confidantes to consider a last-minute entry into the race – and even polled New Hampshire voters about the idea. Ultimately, though, Chelsea Clinton persuaded her mother to opt out of a run, arguing that voters wouldn’t forgive her for breaking a pledge to serve a full Senate term.
–Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and a group of other senators who would back Hillary Clinton’s candidacy encouraged Obama to run for the White House as early as 2006. The concern over Clinton was that she would be a weak Democratic standard-bearer while Obama could energize the party. In late summer 2007, Schumer – using an Obama ally, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), as a back channel – pushed the candidate to “take a two-by-four to Hillary,” as the authors put it.
–In lobbying the late Sen. Edward Kennedy to endorse his wife, former President Clinton angered the liberal icon by belittling Obama. Telling a friend about the conversation, Kennedy recalled Clinton had said “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,” the authors paraphrase. A spokesman for the former president declined to comment on the claim.
–Frustrated over the campaign following her disastrous interview with Katie Couric, Sarah Palin said she regretted accepting the Republican vice presidential nomination. “If I’d known everything I know now, I would not have done this,” she said. McCain’s high command, already worried about her lack of eating and drinking and fearing that she was suffering from post-partum depression, convened a conference call and discussed whether she was mentally unstable.
Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton issued a statement in response to "Game Change" touting the former governor's own insider account.
"The Governor's descriptions of these events are found in her book, 'Going Rogue,'” said Stapleton. “Her descriptions are accurate. She was there. These reporters were not.”
–There were apparently "two Americas" within the marriage between John and Elizabeth Edwards. The former North Carolina senator's wife viewed herself as a worldly intellectual and publicly called her husband "a hick" and his parents "rednecks," according to the authors.
"She was forever letting John know she regarded him as her intellectual inferior," they write, mocking her husband, the presidential hopeful, as somebody who "doesn't read books."
–Before she was tapped as the vice presidential nominee, McCain’s campaign team devoted only five days to vetting Palin and her seventy-four-part questionnaire. But Palin herself only spent a few hours filling it out – an act which had “consumed weeks for other short-listers.” Ultimately, a forty-two-page vetting report of Palin was crashed by McCain’s team in a matter of 40 hours.
–McCain never held a single practice session before the first debate of the general election, in September of 2008. Now-RNC Chairman Michael Steele had spent the entire summer preparing to play Obama in the practice sessions, but McCain wouldn’t spar with Steele out of fear that the sessions would leak and he’d be accused of racial insensitivity
–Upon finding out that McCain had tapped Palin as his running mate, Vice President Dick Cheney called it a “reckless choice,” believing the Alaska governor was unprepared for high office.
–Members of what the authors call Clinton’s “war room within a war room” became convinced in 2006 that Bill Clinton was having a serious extramarital affair, prompting Hillary Clinton to instruct her aides to be prepared to combat the story.
–After Billy Shaheen, Clinton's New Hew Hampshire campaign chairmen and the husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, told the Washington Post that Obama's youthful drug use made him unelectable, Clinton initially cheered him on and encouraged her staff to draw attention to the comment. "Good for him!" she told aides. "Let's push it out." Clinton subsequently personally apologized to Obama over the matter and Shaheen quit the campaign.
–Following the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton was shocked to have been offered the Secretary of State job and decided to reject the offer. She prepared a statement explaining why she would turn the new president down and remain in the Senate. But in an after-midnight call between Clinton and Obama, he persuaded her – only after Clinton expressed concerns about the problems posed by her husband, the former president.
“You know I can’t control him, and at some point he’ll be a problem” the authors paraphrase Clinton as saying. Obama indicated that he was willing to take that risk.
–Reid said Obama could fare well nationally as an African-American candidate because he was “light-skinned” and didn’t speak with a “Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” Saturday, the majority leader said he had used “poor choice of words” and called Obama to apologize; the White House issued a statement indicating that the president had forgiven Reid. (Book: Obama, Biden clashed in '08.)
Ah, look at the thieves bash other as participants in both the Barack Hussein Obama and John Sidney McCain III campaigns of the 2008 general election settle old scores publicly about the unreliability of their respective vice presidential selections, both of which were lambasted on this site from the outset (see
Lest We Forget,
Memo to Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Their Conciliar Enablers,
Fact and Fiction,
Gradually Accepting Naturalism's False Premises, Absolute Insanity,
Facts Are Troublesome Things,
Fallacies Galore, and
It's Still Absolute Insanity). Look at Harry Reid, the all-powerful Majority Leader of the United States Senate, say something that would have cost a "conservative" naturalist his political career (not even the thirty-third degree Mason, former United States Senator Trent Lott, said what Reid did about Obama, stating in late-2002 only that the country would have been better off if Strom Thurmond, then a segregationist, had been elected president in 1948 at the age of forty-six). Look at Bill Clinton's own nascent racism in dismissing Obama by saying "a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee." Look at how the naturalists plot and scheme against each other.
The book which contained these revelations, Game Change, has been faulted by some for its failure to cite sources in many instances and in presenting paraphrases of conversations. There can be no doubt, however, that the general tenor of the conversations themselves reflect how the naturalists refer to each other, without mercy and without any understanding that each of the people against whom they are plotting bear within themselves the very image and likeness of God in their immortal souls. Those who believe in naturalism and act amorally, telling one lie after another to cover up their tracks and their misdeeds so as to convince "true believers" of their own moral rectitude (sound familiar?), are incapable of understanding what constitutes order within their own souls, no less order in society. Men and women who believe in naturalism and act amorally can never bring "security" to nation where the least among us, the preborn, are permitted to be slaughtered by chemical and surgical means under cover of the civil law.
A Catholic thinks in terms of the supernatural, understanding the importance organizing monthly Rosary processions to make reparation for the sins of the nation and to pray for her conversion to the true Faith. Nothing was dearer to the heart of Orestes Brownson than the thought of a Catholic America. Indeed, Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 to effect the conversion of the Americas. And it is with Our Lady's Holy Rosary that we must oppose naturalism as we pray for the conversion of all naturalists, lifting high the Cross of the Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in every aspect of our lives at all times without any exception whatsoever.
Father Frederick Faber explained the allure of naturalism in his own day, an allure that is no less enticing today to Catholics all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide than it was one hundred fifty years ago now:
All devotions have their characteristics; all of them have their own theological meanings. We must say something, therefore, upon the characteristics of the devotion to the Precious Blood. In reality the whole Treatise has more or less illustrated this matter. But something still remains to be said, and something will bear to be repeated. We will take the last first. Devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotional expression of the prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul is the apostle of redeeming grace. A devout study of his epistles would be our deliverance from most of the errors of the day. He is truly the apostle of all ages. To each age doubtless he seems to have a special mission. Certainly his mission to our is very special. The very air we breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel shapes of an old Pelagianism. The spirit of the world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it comes to pass that wrong theories among us are always constructed round a nuclear of Pelagianism; and Pelagianism is just the heresy which is least able to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is the age of the natural as opposed to the supernatural, of the acquired as opposed to the infused, of the active as opposed to the passive. This is what I said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat. Now, this exclusive fondness for the natural is on the whole very captivating. It takes with the young, because it saves thought. It does not explain difficulties; but it lessens the number of difficulties to be explained. It takes with the idle; it dispenses from slowness and research. It takes with the unimaginative, because it withdraws just the very element in religion which teases them. It takes with the worldly, because it subtracts the enthusiasm from piety and the sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with the controversial, because it is a short road and a shallow ford. It forms a school of thought which, while it admits that we have an abundance of grace, intimates that we are not much better for it. It merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes the sovereignty of God odious by representing it as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all its ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devotion to the Precious Blood.
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The time is also one of libertinage; and a time of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical logic, one of infidelity. Whatever brings out God's side in creation, and magnifies his incessant supernatural operation in it, is the controversy which infidelity can least withstand. Now, the devotion to the Precious Blood does this in a very remarkable way. It shows that the true significance in every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, written in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 258-259.)
This is just as much a description of our own days as it was of Father Faber's. Indeed, Father Faber was merely describing naturalism's hatred for the Holy Faith, a hatred that is from Hell and that is meant to send souls there for all eternity as disorder is sown into the hearts and souls of men to be spread abroad in one nation after another as even well-meaning people come to believe that there is some naturalistic "remedy" for the evils of naturalism that are at the proximate root of our personal and social problems today.
We must lift high the Holy Cross in our daily lives, especially by means of assisting daily at true offerings of the Holy Sacrifice of Mass, making sure to be mindful of the fact that Our Lady is present mystically at every Mass just as she was present physically on Mount Calvary on the first Good Friday. Our Lady will lead us out of this mess caused by Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. We simply have to cling to her with confidence and with hope that our prayers and sacrifices and sufferings--and the reparation we make for our own many sins--will help in some small way to expedite the day of the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart as the fruit of the faithful fulfillment of her Fatima Message.
With Father Miguel Augustin Pro, S.J., and the Cristeros in Mexico to whom he brought the Sacraments, who uttered the battle cry of "Viva Cristo Rey!", we must always lift high the banner of Christ the King, remembering these stirring words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925:
We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.
Moreover, the annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them. While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.
Naturalism cannot be opposed with naturalism. Naturalism and all of its attendant evils can be opposed only with Catholicism.
When are we going to learn this simple lesson as we lift high the Holy Cross and pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit?
Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint 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
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