On Borrowed Time No More

by Thomas A. Droleskey

A world founded in a rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen is destined to degenerate over the course of time. This process of degeneration can be retarded a bit now and again. Such a retardation of the rate of degeneration, however, does not stop the degenerative processes from continuing to eat away at the fabric of a world steeped in the multiple lies of naturalism (religious indifferentism, semi-Pelagianism, anti-Incarnationalism, legal positivism, moral relativism, utilitarianism) that must result, at least sooner or later, in the triumph of statism as the means to "organize" human lives. The state must become a false "god," demanding of its slaves total adherence to its "directives" that are "received" straight from Hell itself, if it does not worship the one and only true God and accord to His one and only true Church her proper rights insofar as directing the eternal good of souls is concerned.

The revolution that was wrought by Father Martin Luther, O.S.A., against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to organize society and thus to direct man's return to Him through His Catholic Church has swallowed up hundreds of millions of victims in the past nearly half-millennium. Lacking the ultimate safeguards, both personal and social, provided by the Catholic Church, men and their nations have lived in the midst of an assortment of lies about how it is possible to save their souls and to order their societies absent a due submission to the Deposit of Faith that the Second Person of the Blessed made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, for its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. The Protestant Revolution of Martin Luther and John Calvin and Thomas Cranmer and John Wesley and John Knox and countless others helped to spawn the social revolutions of Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, providing a fertile ground for the rise of Judeo-Masonry and its sophisms about how men can order themselves justly without reference to any denominational creed, especially that of the true religion, Catholicism.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, quite fully, contrasting the order and the glory of the Middle Ages with the confusion and disarray wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the rise of the secular, religiously indifferentist, naturalistic civil state of Modernity:

There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: "When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay."

But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law.

Amongst these principles the main one lays down that as all men are alike by race and nature, so in like manner all are equal in the control of their life; that each one is so far his own master as to be in no sense under the rule of any other individual; that each is free to think on every subject just as he may choose, and to do whatever he may like to do; that no man has any right to rule over other men. In a society grounded upon such maxims all government is nothing more nor less than the will of the people, and the people, being under the power of itself alone, is alone its own ruler. It does choose, nevertheless, some to whose charge it may commit itself, but in such wise that it makes over to them not the right so much as the business of governing, to be exercised, however, in its name.

The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself. Thus, as is evident, a State becomes nothing but a multitude which is its own master and ruler. And since the people is declared to contain within itself the spring-head of all rights and of all power, it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God. Moreover. it believes that it is not obliged to make public profession of any religion; or to inquire which of the very many religions is the only one true; or to prefer one religion to all the rest; or to show to any form of religion special favor; but, on the contrary, is bound to grant equal rights to every creed, so that public order may not be disturbed by any particular form of religious belief.

And it is a part of this theory that all questions that concern religion are to be referred to private judgment; that every one is to be free to follow whatever religion he prefers, or none at all if he disapprove of all. From this the following consequences logically flow: that the judgment of each one's conscience is independent of all law; that the most unrestrained opinions may be openly expressed as to the practice or omission of divine worship; and that every one has unbounded license to think whatever he chooses and to publish abroad whatever he thinks.

Now, when the State rests on foundations like those just named -- and for the time being they are greatly in favor -- it readily appears into what and how unrightful a position the Church is driven. For, when the management of public business is in harmony with doctrines of such a kind, the Catholic religion is allowed a standing in civil society equal only, or inferior, to societies alien from it; no regard is paid to the laws of the Church, and she who, by the order and commission of Jesus Christ, has the duty of teaching all nations, finds herself forbidden to take any part in the instruction of the people. With reference to matters that are of twofold jurisdiction, they who administer the civil power lay down the law at their own will, and in matters that appertain to religion defiantly put aside the most sacred decrees of the Church. They claim jurisdiction over the marriages of Catholics, even over the bond as well as the unity and the indissolubility of matrimony. They lay hands on the goods of the clergy, contending that the Church cannot possess property. Lastly, they treat the Church with such arrogance that, rejecting entirely her title to the nature and rights of a perfect society, they hold that she differs in no respect from other societies in the State, and for this reason possesses no right nor any legal power of action, save that which she holds by the concession and favor of the government. If in any State the Church retains her own agreement publicly entered into by the two powers, men forthwith begin to cry out that matters affecting the Church must be separated from those of the State.

Their object in uttering this cry is to be able to violate unpunished their plighted faith, and in all things to have unchecked control. And as the Church, unable to abandon her chiefest and most sacred duties, cannot patiently put up with this, and asks that the pledge given to her be fully and scrupulously acted up to, contentions frequently arise between the ecclesiastical and the civil power, of which the issue commonly is that the weaker power yields to the one which is stronger in human resources.

Accordingly, it has become the practice and determination under this condition of public polity (now so much admired by many) either to forbid the action of the Church altogether, or to keep her in check and bondage to the State. Public enactments are in great measure framed with this design. The drawing up of laws, the administration of State affairs, the godless education of youth, the spoliation and suppression of religious orders, the overthrow of the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff, all alike aim to this one end -- to paralyze the action of Christian institutions, to cramp to the utmost the freedom of the Catholic Church, and to curtail her ever single prerogative.

Now, natural reason itself proves convincingly that such concepts of the government of a State are wholly at variance with the truth. Nature itself bears witness that all power, of every kind, has its origin from God, who is its chief and most august source.

The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.

 

A grave and fatal error, ladies and gentlemen, is what Pope Leo XIII called the exclusion of the true Church from the business of life and from the making of laws. The Catholic Church alone possesses the means to guide men so that they will be able, whether acting as individuals or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance, to pursue their temporal activities in light of their Last End, seeking at all times to please Christ the King by relying so tenderly and confidently in the intercessory power of Mary our Immaculate Queen. There is no other means by which men may know personal or social order. None.

Pope Saint Pius X noted this quite clearly in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

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.

There is no secular, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, non-denominational, inter-denominational, philosophical or ideological system that can take the place of the true Faith, which is why conciliarism's "reconciliation" with the anti-Incarnational principles of Modernity that can result only in the triumph of statism has played its own very nefarious role in worsening the state of affairs as it has been degenerating from the days of Martin Luther to the present time. We were on "borrowed time" before conciliarism, building on the heritage of the heresy of Americanism, began to propagate its errors of religious liberty and separation of Church and State. We are on "borrowed time" no more.

The state has triumphed as the demigod that demands our every allegiance. Statism has triumphed in the not-so-free "West" as a result of the forces that have been unfolding from the time of the Protestant Revolt to the present day. No bloody revolution was necessary as in England during the bloodletting and land grabbing that took place between 1534 and 1547 at the orders of King Henry VIII. No one needed to be sent to the guillotine as happened during the French Revolution. No gulags needed to be opened as occurred under Vladimir Lenin in 1918 in Russia, not quite yet the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, under Bolshevik control. No priests, such as Father Maximilian Kolbe, M.I., who opposed all forms of naturalism needed to be sent to Auschwitz by the Third Reich. The gradual but ever-so-steady march and triumph of statism in the West has occurred as the average person, diverted by bread and circuses, believe it to be his advantage to have the state take away more and more of his legitimate liberties and more and more of his private property to make him "secure" and to "solve" problems that have their remote cause in Original Sin and their proximate cause in our own Actual Sins.

Pope Pius XI condemned all forms of statism throughout his seventeen year pontificate (1922-1939). In two encyclical letters separated by but two days, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937, and Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1939, he condemned the nationalistic statism of German fascism and the Communist statism of Marxism-Leninism. Each of these encyclical letters contains passages that have direct relevance to our own situation in the statist West, including the not-so-free United States of America:

Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world.

In your country, Venerable Brethren, voices are swelling into a chorus urging people to leave the Church, and among the leaders there is more than one whose official position is intended to create the impression that this infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a signal and meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State. Secret and open measures of intimidation, the threat of economic and civic disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain classes of Catholic functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right and dignity. Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay so dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss, there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: "Begone, Satan! For it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. iv. 10). And turning to the Church, he shall say: "Thou, my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly promises or threats, I betray the vows of my baptism." As to those who imagine that they can reconcile exterior infidelity tO one and the same Church, let them hear Our Lord's warning: -- "He that shall deny me before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke xii. 9).

Faith in the Church cannot stand pure and true without the support of faith in the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. The same moment when Peter, in the presence of all the Apostles and disciples, confesses his faith in Christ, Son of the Living God, the answer he received in reward for his faith and his confession was the word that built the Church, the only Church of Christ, on the rock of Peter (Matt. xvi. 18). Thus was sealed the connection between the faith in Christ, the Church and the Primacy. True and lawful authority is invariably a bond of unity, a source of strength, a guarantee against division and ruin, a pledge for the future: and this is verified in the deepest and sublimest sense, when that authority, as in the case of the Church, and the Church alone, is sealed by the promise and the guidance of the Holy Ghost and His irresistible support. Should men, who are not even united by faith in Christ, come and offer you the seduction of a national German Church, be convinced that it is nothing but a denial of the one Church of Christ and the evident betrayal of that universal evangelical mission, for which a world Church alone is qualified and competent. The live history of other national churches with their paralysis, their domestication and subjection to worldly powers, is sufficient evidence of the sterility to which is condemned every branch that is severed from the trunk of the living Church. Whoever counters these erroneous developments with an uncompromising No from the very outset, not only serves the purity of his faith in Christ, but also the welfare and the vitality of his own people.

You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, that religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and distorted to profane use. "Revelation" in its Christian sense, means the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the "suggestions" of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people's history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency. "Faith" consists in holding as true what God has revealed and proposes through His Church to man's acceptance. It is "the evidence of things that appear not" (Heb. ii. 1). The joyful and proud confidence in the future of one's people, instinct in every heart, is quite a different thing from faith in a religious sense. To substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this, to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless play on words, if it does not conceal a confusion of concepts, or worse.

"Immortality" in a Christian sense means the survival of man after his terrestrial death, for the purpose of eternal reward or punishment. Whoever only means by the term, the collective survival here on earth of his people for an indefinite length of time, distorts one of the fundamental notions of the Christian Faith and tampers with the very foundations of the religious concept of the universe, which requires a moral order.

"Original sin" is the hereditary but impersonal fault of Adam's descendants, who have sinned in him (Rom. v. 12). It is the loss of grace, and therefore of eternal life, together with a propensity to evil, which everybody must, with the assistance of grace, penance, resistance and moral effort, repress and conquer. The passion and death of the Son of God has redeemed the world from the hereditary curse of sin and death. Faith in these truths, which in your country are today the butt of the cheap derision of Christ's enemies, belongs to the inalienable treasury of Christian revelation.

The cross of Christ, though it has become to many a stumbling block and foolishness (1 Cor. i. 23) remains for the believer the holy sign of his redemption, the emblem of moral strength and greatness. We live in its shadow and die in its embrace. It will stand on our grave as a pledge of our faith and our hope in the eternal light.

Humility in the spirit of the Gospel and prayer for the assistance of grace are perfectly compatible with self-confidence and heroism. The Church of Christ, which throughout the ages and to the present day numbers more confessors and voluntary martyrs than any other moral collectivity, needs lessons from no one in heroism of feeling and action. The odious pride of reformers only covers itself with ridicule when it rails at Christian humility as though it were but a cowardly pose of self-degradation.

"Grace," in a wide sense, may stand for any of the Creator's gifts to His creature; but in its Christian designation, it means all the supernatural tokens of God's love; God's intervention which raises man to that intimate communion of life with Himself, called by the Gospel "adoption of the children of God." "Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called and should be the sons of God" (1 John iii. 1). To discard this gratuitous and free elevation in the name of a so-called German type amounts to repudiating openly a fundamental truth of Christianity. It would be an abuse of our religious vocabulary to place on the same level supernatural grace and natural gifts. Pastors and guardians of the people of God will do well to resist this plunder of sacred things and this confusion of ideas.

It is on faith in God, preserved pure and stainless, that man's morality is based. All efforts to remove from under morality and the moral order the granite foundation of faith and to substitute for it the shifting sands of human regulations, sooner or later lead these individuals or societies to moral degradation. The fool who has said in his heart "there is no God" goes straight to moral corruption (Psalms xiii. 1), and the number of these fools who today are out to sever morality from religion, is legion. They either do not see or refuse to see that the banishment of confessional Christianity, i.e., the clear and precise notion of Christianity, from teaching and education, from the organization of social and political life, spells spiritual spoliation and degradation. No coercive power of the State, no purely human ideal, however noble and lofty it be, will ever be able to make shift of the supreme and decisive impulses generated by faith in God and Christ. If the man, who is called to the hard sacrifice of his own ego to the common good, loses the support of the eternal and the divine, that comforting and consoling faith in a God who rewards all good and punishes all evil, then the result of the majority will be, not the acceptance, but the refusal of their duty. The conscientious observation of the ten commandments of God and the precepts of the Church (which are nothing but practical specifications of rules of the Gospels) is for every one an unrivaled school of personal discipline, moral education and formation of character, a school that is exacting, but not to excess. A merciful God, who as Legislator, says -- Thou must! -- also gives by His grace the power to will and to do. To let forces of moral formation of such efficacy lie fallow, or to exclude them positively from public education, would spell religious under-feeding of a nation. To hand over the moral law to man's subjective opinion, which changes with the times, instead of anchoring it in the holy will of the eternal God and His commandments, is to open wide every door to the forces of destruction. The resulting dereliction of the eternal principles of an objective morality, which educates conscience and ennobles every department and organization of life, is a sin against the destiny of a nation, a sin whose bitter fruit will poison future generations.

Such is the rush of present-day life that it severs from the divine foundation of Revelation, not only morality, but also the theoretical and practical rights. We are especially referring to what is called the natural law, written by the Creator's hand on the tablet of the heart (Rom. ii. 14) and which reason, not blinded by sin or passion, can easily read. It is in the light of the commands of this natural law, that all positive law, whoever be the lawgiver, can be gauged in its moral content, and hence, in the authority it wields over conscience. Human laws in flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated with a taint which no force, no power can mend. In the light of this principle one must judge the axiom, that "right is common utility," a proposition which may be given a correct significance, it means that what is morally indefensible, can never contribute to the good of the people. But ancient paganism acknowledged that the axiom, to be entirely true, must be reversed and be made to say: "Nothing can be useful, if it is not at the same time morally good" (Cicero, De Off. ii. 30). Emancipated from this oral rule, the principle would in international law carry a perpetual state of war between nations; for it ignores in national life, by confusion of right and utility, the basic fact that man as a person possesses rights he holds from God, and which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or neglect. To overlook this truth is to forget that the real common good ultimately takes its measure from man's nature, which balances personal rights and social obligations, and from the purpose of society, established for the benefit of human nature. Society, was intended by the Creator for the full development of individual possibilities, and for the social benefits, which by a give and take process, every one can claim for his own sake and that of others. Higher and more general values, which collectivity alone can provide, also derive from the Creator for the good of man, and for the full development, natural and supernatural, and the realization of his perfection. To neglect this order is to shake the pillars on which society rests, and to compromise social tranquillity, security and existence.

The believer has an absolute right to profess his Faith and live according to its dictates. Laws which impede this profession and practice of Faith are against natural law.

Parents who are earnest and conscious of their educative duties, have a primary right to the education of the children God has given them in the spirit of their Faith, and according to its prescriptions. Laws and measures which in school questions fail to respect this freedom of the parents go against natural law, and are immoral. The Church, whose mission it is to preserve and explain the natural law, as it is divine in its origin, cannot but declare that the recent enrollment into schools organized without a semblance of freedom, is the result of unjust pressure, and is a violation of every common right. (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)

Nevertheless, the struggle between good and evil remained in the world as a sad legacy of the original fall. Nor has the ancient tempter ever ceased to deceive mankind with false promises. It is on this account that one convulsion following upon another has marked the passage of the centuries, down to the revolution of our own days. This modern revolution, it may be said, has actually broken out or threatens everywhere, and it exceeds in amplitude and violence anything yet experienced in the preceding persecutions launched against the Church. Entire peoples find themselves in danger of falling back into a barbarism worse than that which oppressed the greater part of the world at the coming of the Redeemer.

This all too imminent danger, Venerable Brethren, as you have already surmised, is bolshevistic and atheistic Communism, which aims at upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization .

In the face of such a threat, the Catholic Church could not and does not remain silent. This Apostolic See, above all, has not refrained from raising its voice, for it knows that its proper and social mission is to defend truth, justice and all those eternal values which Communism ignores or attacks. Ever since the days when groups of "intellectuals" were formed in an arrogant attempt to free civilization from the bonds of morality and religion, Our Predecessors overtly and explicitly drew the attention of the world to the consequences of the dechristianization of human society. With reference to Communism, Our Venerable Predecessor, Pius IX, of holy memory, as early as 1846 pronounced a solemn condemnation, which he confirmed in the words of the Syllabus directed against "that infamous doctrine of so-called Communism which is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and if once adopted would utterly destroy the rights, property and possessions of all men, and even society itself." Later on, another of Our predecessors, the immortal Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris, defined Communism as "the fatal plague which insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin." With clear intuition he pointed out that the atheistic movements existing among the masses of the Machine Age had their origin in that school of philosophy which for centuries had sought to divorce science from the life of the Faith and of the Church. . . .

The Communism of today, more emphatically than similar movements in the past, conceals in itself a false messianic idea. A pseudo-ideal of justice, of equality and fraternity in labor impregnates all its doctrine and activity with a deceptive mysticism, which communicates a zealous and contagious enthusiasm to the multitudes entrapped by delusive promises. This is especially true in an age like ours, when unusual misery has resulted from the unequal distribution of the goods of this world. This pseudo-ideal is even boastfully advanced as if it were responsible for a certain economic progress. As a matter of fact, when such progress is at all real, its true causes are quite different, as for instance the intensification of industrialism in countries which were formerly almost without it, the exploitation of immense natural resources, and the use of the most brutal methods to insure the achievement of gigantic projects with a minimum of expense.

The doctrine of modern Communism, which is often concealed under the most seductive trappings, is in substance based on the principles of dialectical and historical materialism previously advocated by Marx, of which the theoriticians of bolshevism claim to possess the only genuine interpretation. According to this doctrine there is in the world only one reality, matter, the blind forces of which evolve into plant, animal and man. Even human society is nothing but a phenomenon and form of matter, evolving in the same way. By a law of inexorable necessity and through a perpetual conflict of forces, matter moves towards the final synthesis of a classless society. In such a doctrine, as is evident, there is no room for the idea of God; there is no difference between matter and spirit, between soul and body; there is neither survival of the soul after death nor any hope in a future life. Insisting on the dialectical aspect of their materialism, the Communists claim that the conflict which carries the world towards its final synthesis can be accelerated by man. Hence they endeavor to sharpen the antagonisms which arise between the various classes of society. Thus the class struggle with its consequent violent hate and destruction takes on the aspects of a crusade for the progress of humanity. On the other hand, all other forces whatever, as long as they resist such systematic violence, must be annihilated as hostile to the human race.

Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse. There is no recognition of any right of the individual in his relations to the collectivity; no natural right is accorded to human personality, which is a mere cog-wheel in the Communist system. In man's relations with other individuals, besides, Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents. What men call authority and subordination is derived from the community as its first and only font. Nor is the individual granted any property rights over material goods or the means of production, for inasmuch as these are the source of further wealth, their possession would give one man power over another. Precisely on this score, all forms of private property must be eradicated, for they are at the origin of all economic enslavement .

Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.

What would be the condition of a human society based on such materialistic tenets? It would be a collectivity with no other hierarchy than that of the economic system. It would have only one mission: the production of material things by means of collective labor, so that the goods of this world might be enjoyed in a paradise where each would "give according to his powers" and would "receive according to his needs." Communism recognizes in the collectivity the right, or rather, unlimited discretion, to draft individuals for the labor of the collectivity with no regard for their personal welfare; so that even violence could be legitimately exercised to dragoon the recalcitrant against their wills. In the Communistic commonwealth morality and law would be nothing but a derivation of the existing economic order, purely earthly in origin and unstable in character. In a word. the Communists claim to inaugurate a new era and a new civilization which is the result of blind evolutionary forces culminating in a humanity without God.

When all men have finally acquired the collectivist mentality in this Utopia of a really classless society, the political State, which is now conceived by Communists merely as the instrument by which the proletariat is oppressed by the capitalists, will have lost all reason for its existence and will "wither away." However, until that happy consummation is realized, the State and the powers of the State furnish Communism with the most efficacious and most extensive means for the achievement of its goal.

Such, Venerable Brethren, is the new gospel which bolshevistic and atheistic Communism offers the world as the glad tidings of deliverance and salvation! It is a system full of errors and sophisms. It is in opposition both to reason and to Divine Revelation. It subverts the social order, because it means the destruction of its foundations; because it ignores the true origin and purpose of the State; because it denies the rights, dignity and liberty of human personality.

How is it possible that such a system, long since rejected scientifically and now proved erroneous by experience, how is it, We ask, that such a system could spread so rapidly in all parts of the world? The explanation lies in the fact that too few have been able to grasp the nature of Communism. The majority instead succumb to its deception, skillfully concealed by the most extravagant promises. By pretending to desire only the betterment of the condition of the working classes, by urging the removal of the very real abuses chargeable to the liberalistic economic order, and by demanding a more equitable distribution of this world's goods (objectives entirely and undoubtedly legitimate), the Communist takes advantage of the present world-wide economic crisis to draw into the sphere of his influence even those sections of the populace which on principle reject all forms of materialism and terrorism. And as every error contains its element of truth, the partial truths to which We have referred are astutely presented according to the needs of time and place, to conceal, when convenient, the repulsive crudity and inhumanity 540 of Communistic principles and tactics. Thus the Communist ideal wins over many of the better minded members of the community. These in turn become the apostles of the movement among the younger intelligentsia who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system. The preachers of Communism are also proficient in exploiting racial antagonisms and political divisions and oppositions. They take advantage of the lack of orientation characteristic of modern agnostic science in order to burrow into the universities, where they bolster up the principles of their doctrine with pseudo-scientific arguments.

If we would explain the blind acceptance of Communism by so many thousands of workmen, we must remember that the way had been already prepared for it by the religious and moral destitution in which wage-earners had been left by liberal economics. Even on Sundays and holy days, labor-shifts were given no time to attend to their essential religious duties. No one thought of building churches within convenient distance of factories, nor of facilitating the work of the priest. On the contrary, laicism was actively and persistently promoted, with the result that we are now reaping the fruits of the errors so often denounced by Our Predecessors and by Ourselves. It can surprise no one that the Communistic fallacy should be spreading in a world already to a large extent de-Christianized.

There is another explanation for the rapid diffusion of the Communistic ideas now seeping into every nation, great and small, advanced and backward, so that no corner of the earth is free from them. This explanation is to be found in a propaganda so truly diabolical that the world has perhaps never witnessed its like before. It is directed from one common center. It is shrewdly adapted to the varying conditions of diverse peoples. It has at its disposal great financial resources, gigantic organizations, international congresses, and countless trained workers. It makes use of pamphlets and reviews, of cinema, theater and radio, of schools and even universities. Little by little it penetrates into all classes of the people and even reaches the better-minded groups of the community, with the result that few are aware of the poison which increasingly pervades their minds and hearts. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

 

A careful review of these excerpted passages from Mit Brennender Sorge and Divini Redemptoris will reveal that they have direct application to the "West" today. I have indicated these direct applications in a number of articles in the past, and do so in great detail in my "Living in the Shadow of the Cross" lecture program. For the sake of brevity (all right, all right, stop laughing!), however, one can see that so many Americans, including a lot of Catholics, exalt the "nation" over the true Faith (and/or believe that the concept of religiously indifferentist nation is compatible with the Faith and with the "right ordering" of civil society), thus permitting the civil state all manner of license to do as it pleases as private property is confiscated (confiscatory taxation, taxation on the purchase of goods, including fuel and heating oil, regulatory measures that stifle the family farm and small business owners, etc.) and legitimate liberties curbed as abject moral evils are promoted under cover of law. Part and parcel of this process is the arrogation unto the civil state of the role of the primary educator of children and in the establishment of curricula of study, something that does not belong to the civil state in the slightest.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the Court of Appeals in the People's Republic of California has ruled that home-schooling is illegal. Why should this shock us? Over four thousand babies are killed each and every day in this country by means of surgical abortions. Thousands more die as a result of chemical abortifacients. Fathers have no legal rights to seek to save their children from execution. Parents of minor children who are seeking to kill their children surgically have no rights to intervene to save the lives of their grandchildren and to save the immortal souls of their own children. Why should we be surprised, therefore, that a court in the State of California, where surgical baby-killing under cover of law (thank you, states' rights!), has attacked the Natural Law right of parents to serve as the primary educators of their children. This makes perfect sense, ladies and gentlemen, as part of the degenerative processes of a world where the state must serve as demigod in the wake of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen.

An article I wrote two years ago and revised last year, explained the origin of state control of education. It is worth placing here in its entirety in light of the current situation in the State of California:

The scene is tragic. Truly tragic. It is played out almost every weekday for a period of nine months out of every year. In some cases, however, it is played out on every work day of the year.

What scene is this? The scene of children being dropped off, either by their parents or by school bus drivers, at America's concentration camps, that is, public schools. Over a million parents each year voluntarily kill their children by means of surgical abortion. Millions more voluntarily kill their preborn children by chemical means. Tens of millions of parents kill their children's immortal souls by sending them to glorified detention centers, public schools, which fill them with disinformation as they prepare them to be the reflexive slaves of the state and mindless, robotic consumers in our land of consumption and eternal death. Young people, whose immortal souls have been purchased by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood, are subjected to endless propaganda and brainwashing in order to eliminate from their all tendencies to engage in rational thought, no less aspire to the heights of personal sanctity. Every effort is made to reaffirm young people, most of whom are unrepentant participants in objectively sinful behavior, in beliefs and practices that can only wind up leading them to Hell for all eternity if they do not convert before they die.

As one whose career as a formal classroom professor of political science at the college and university level spanned three decades, I can attest to the utter rot that emanates from the public schools of this country. Mind you, I am not indemnifying Catholic schools, which have been the subject of numerous articles of mine in the past twenty-six years. Remember, we started Christ the King College to be the antidote to the Modernist poisons that pass for "Catholicism" in almost every Catholic college and university in this country today. However, the purpose of this article is remind readers that any proposal to "improve" public schools is bound to fail because public schooling (the word "education" must never be used in association with the vast criminal enterprise, funded by taxpayer dollars, known as public schools) is founded on many of the falsehoods of Modernity, including the Protestant Revolution and Freemasonry.

Pope Leo XIII noted the Masonic roots of public schooling in his encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus. April 20, 1884:

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring. . . .

With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavors to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.

 

This description of the Masonic influence on society is just as relevant today as it was 122 years ago. Truth be told, however, the description provided by Pope Leo XIII in Humanum Genus of  the goals of public schooling apply equally to the very first in the United States of America to institute statewide control of public schooling, which began with the establishment of the State Board of Education by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1837. Statewide control of public schooling and its curriculum of "studies" was an effort undertaken by Horace Mann (1796-1859) to mandate the instruction of certain core American beliefs (civil liberty, religious indifferentism, egalitarianism, cultural pluralism) to the children of Irish Catholic immigrants who had made their way to Massachusetts. These children had to be Americanized, they had to be divested of their attachment to "concepts" that were foreign to the "American" way.

Here is a brief description of Horace Mann's principal goals in the creation of statewide educational standards:

1) Fifth Annual Report (1841). Mann argued successfully that economic wealth would increase through an educated public. It was therefore in the self interest of business to pay the taxation for public education.

(2) Seventh Annual Report (1843). Horace Mann inspected and appraised favorably the Prussian school system. This report led to widespread improvement .of education through the educational theories of Pestalozzi, Herbart and eventually Froebel.

(3) Tenth Annual Report (1846). Mann asserted that education was a natural right for every child. It is a necessary responsibility of the State to insure that education was provided for every child. This report led to the adoption of the first State law requiring compulsory attendance in school in 1852.

(4) Twelfth Annual Report (1848). He presented a rationale for the support of public education through taxation. Society improves as a result of an educated p public. He argued for non-sectarian schools, so the taxpayer would not be in the position of supporting any established religion with which he might disagree in conscience. (Educational Contributions of Horace Mann)

It was an easy step from there to where we are today, with even parents who are exercising their natural law rights as the principal educators of their children forced to submit to the unjust usurpation of their parental authority by the state. Thus, any Catholic who worships at the altar of the false god of "states' rights" had better reckon with the fact that a sophisticated warfare against the souls of young Catholics began at the state level in this country in 1837 and has taken root in every state from that time to the present with a particular vengeance. State governments are no more capable than a national or central government in pursuing the common good if those governments do not recognize and therefore submit themselves to the Social Reign of Christ the King as exercised by Holy Mother Church. Here is where the Protestant Revolt, which was founded by Martin Luther in a specific rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King, and Freemasonry, which makes constant warfare against the true Faith, converged to produce a country where a mutual hatred of all things Catholic has been enshrined as the very foundation of American public schooling.

The State of Oregon, a den of Freemasonry which has championed "physician-assisted suicide" in recent years as a result of a voter initiative enacted into law by means of a popular referendum, became quite a laboratory to see how far the warfare against the Church could be taken. A voter initiative, sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan and the Oregon Scottish Rite Masons, was approved on November 7, 1922, to force all parents to send their children to public schools. A legal battle ensued, prompting the Supreme Court of the United States on June 1, 1925, to issue a decision in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters that invalidated the Oregon law, which would have become effective in 1926 had the Court not ruled against the law.

Writing for the Court, Associate Justice James C. McReynolds, an appointee of President Woodrow Wilson who served on the Court between 1914 and 1941, noted:

The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

 

Although Justice McReynolds said that parents could not be forced to send their children to public schools, he did hold that the states had the right to compel attendance in some school and to establish educational standards, thereby providing the United State Supreme Court's imprimatur on the usurpation of the rights of parents and of the Church that had begun with Horace Mann eighty-eight years before. Consider the language of Justice McReynolds in this regard:

No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.

 

This is quite a loaded passage. What constitutes "good citizenship? Acceptance of American "values," including Calvinistic capitalism and religious indifferentism? What is "manifestly inimical to the public welfare?" Advocating the Catholicization of one's nation? Justice McReynolds, was, however, simply reaffirming what had become by his name an accepted article of the American "faith," that public schooling was the backbone of a "free" people.

Obviously, the very belief that we are a "free" people is itself a gigantic myth. We are not. We are the slaves of the state and its arbitrary whims. We are the slave of a Constitution that is indifferent to the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb and hostile to the Deposit of Faith the God-Man has entrusted solely to His true Church. We are the slaves of career politicians who believe that we exist in order to enable them to pick our pockets to enlarge the powers of the state and thus increase their ability to control every aspect of the legitimate exercise of our human free wills. We are the slaves of the corporate robber barons who contribute mightily to the coffers of these career politicians while they manufacture products to appeal to our greed and our desire to luxury, entrapping us into various snares of endless materialism and hedonism. We are the slaves of the powerful Judeo-Masonic machinery that controls our banking and our entertainment and our courts and our "educational" system. We are the slaves of stupid myths about this country being the "guarantor of human liberty worldwide" when the truth is that anyone who points out the absurdity of these myths is denounced fascistically as unpatriotic. We are the slaves of pharmaceutical companies who produce poisons to addict us to their "cures" for diseases that have been produced by lives of excess and by the very chemical additives placed in our food and our water to make us sick so as to make us dependent upon these poisons. We are not a free people. We are slaves.

Cognizant of the enslavement of mankind by the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt and by the rise of ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical letter on the subject of education, Divini Illius Magistri December 31, 1929, to direct the minds of Catholics in the midst of Modernity's savage war against the souls of Catholics in allegedly "free" nations. A few salient points from Divini Illius Magistri will indicate the simple Catholic truth that the state has no role to play in operating of schools, less yet in the mandating of a curriculum of studies on any student at any time.

Writing about the erroneous belief concerning the alleged power of "education" to improve the lot of man, Pope Pius XI noted:

This perfection they seek to acquire by means of education. But many of them with, it would seem, too great insistence on the etymological meaning of the word, pretend to draw education out of human nature itself and evolve it by its own unaided powers. Such easily fall into error, because, instead of fixing their gaze on God, first principle and last end of the whole universe, they fall back upon themselves, becoming attached exclusively to passing things of earth; and thus their restlessness will never cease till they direct their attention and their efforts to God, the goal of all perfection, according to the profound saying of Saint Augustine: "Thou didst create us, O Lord, for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it rest in Thee."

One of the chief pillars of Freemasonry (and of all aspects of Modernity) is precisely that man can solve all of his problems by the use of his "unaided" powers. That is, man does not need belief in the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord entrusted solely to the Catholic Church. He does not need belief in, access to, and cooperation with sanctifying grace to submit to the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith and to live fruitfully thereby.

True education, wrote Pope Pius XI, must revolve around Our Lord as He has revealed Himself through His true Church.

It is therefore as important to make no mistake in education, as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected. In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His Only Begotten Son, who alone is "the way, the truth and the life," there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education.

(As a note of reference, it is important to bear in mind that the Popes of the Catholic Church, as opposed to the pontiffs of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, used the word "Christian" to refer to the Catholic Faith. The reason for this is simple: although Protestants say that they are Christians, they do not truly know Our Lord since they reject His true Church and dissent from multiple articles He has revealed and deposited in His true Church. They do not represent Christianity at all. Only the Catholic Church represents Christianity. She alone has the right to use the appellation of "Christian.")

Pope Pius XI, the great exponent of the Social Reign of Christ the King, noted in Divini Illius Magistri that the fate of nations depended upon the education of youth in the truths of the Catholic Faith:

From this we see the supreme importance of Christian education, not merely for each individual, but for families and for the whole of human society, whose perfection comes from the perfection of the elements that compose it. From these same principles, the excellence, we may well call it the unsurpassed excellence, of the work of Christian education becomes manifest and clear; for after all it aims at securing the Supreme Good, that is, God, for the souls of those who are being educated, and the maximum of well-being possible here below for human society. And this it does as efficaciously as man is capable of doing it, namely by cooperating with God in the perfecting of individuals and of society, in as much as education makes upon the soul the first, the most powerful and lasting impression for life according to the well-known saying of the Wise Man, "A young man according to his way, even when he is old, he will not depart from it." With good reason therefore did St. John Chrysostom say, "What greater work is there than training the mind and forming the habits of the young?"

Man must always keep his mind his First Cause and Last End in all of his activities, whether he is acting individually or collectively with others in the pursuit of the common good of his nation. The state of a nation depends upon the state of souls, and the state of souls depends upon the extent to which individual citizens keep themselves in states of Sanctifying Grace and adhere completely to the Deposit of Faith, including the Church's immutable Social Doctrine on the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, which does not worship at the altar of the false, mythological god of American "civil liberty."

The Church, therefore, must be free to pursue the entirety of the mission, including that of education, entrusted to her by her Divine Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, without any interference from the state. Parents, who form the domestic cell of the Church in their families, must be free to do so in the bosom of their homes.

Pope Pius XI noted this in Divini Illius Magistri:

Hence it is that in this proper object of her mission, that is, "in faith and morals, God Himself has made the Church sharer in the divine magisterium and, by a special privilege, granted her immunity from error; hence she is the mistress of men, supreme and absolutely sure, and she has inherent in herself an inviolable right to freedom in teaching.' By necessary consequence the Church is independent of any sort of earthly power as well in the origin as in the exercise of her mission as educator, not merely in regard to her proper end and object, but also in regard to the means necessary and suitable to attain that end. Hence with regard to every other kind of human learning and instruction, which is the common patrimony of individuals and society, the Church has an independent right to make use of it, and above all to decide what may help or harm Christian education. And this must be so, because the Church as a perfect society has an independent right to the means conducive to its end, and because every form of instruction, no less than every human action, has a necessary connection with man's last end, and therefore cannot be withdrawn from the dictates of the divine law, of which the Church is guardian, interpreter and infallible mistress.

This truth is clearly set forth by Pius X of saintly memory:

"Whatever a Christian does even in the order of things of earth, he may not overlook the supernatural; indeed he must, according to the teaching of Christian wisdom, direct all things towards the supreme good as to his last end; all his actions, besides, in so far as good or evil in the order of morality, that is, in keeping or not with natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church."

 

Only a fool would contend that Pope Saint Pius X was wrong, that there is ever a moment when something we do in the "order of the things of the earth" can overlook the supernatural. Those "conservatives" who believe that they can devise plans to combat liberalism and statism and socialism without seeking to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King are indeed fools, plain and simple. They tilt at windmills as they refuse, for whatever reason, usually involving a dogmatic adherence to a political philosophy that they contend pridefully contains the ability to "resolve" social problems, to state this simple truth: all things must be restored in Christ the King, both individually and collectively.

After delineating the rights of the Church and the family with respect to education--and discussing instances when a state ordered according to Catholic teaching might have to intervene to protect a child whose religious instruction was being ignored by his parents, Pope Pius XI wrote in Divini Illius Magistri about the simple fact that the welfare of the state itself depends entirely upon its submission to the truths of the Catholic Faith:

 

Whoever refuses to admit these principles, and hence to apply them to education, must necessarily deny that Christ has founded His Church for the eternal salvation of mankind, and maintain instead that civil society and the State are not subject to God and to His law, natural and divine. Such a doctrine is manifestly impious, contrary to right reason, and, especially in this matter of education, extremely harmful to the proper training of youth, and disastrous as well for civil society as for the well-being of all mankind. On the other hand from the application of these principles, there inevitably result immense advantages for the right formation of citizens. This is abundantly proved by the history of every age. Tertullian in his Apologeticus could throw down a challenge to the enemies of the Church in the early days of Christianity, just as St. Augustine did in his; and we today can repeat with him:

"Let those who declare the teaching of Christ to be opposed to the welfare of the State, furnish us with an army of soldiers such as Christ says soldiers ought to be; let them give us subjects, husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, kings, judges, taxpayers and tax gatherers who live up to the teachings of Christ; and then let them dare assert that Christian doctrine is harmful to the State. Rather let them not hesitate one moment to acclaim that doctrine, rightly observed, the greatest safeguard of the State."

While treating of education, it is not out of place to show here how an ecclesiastical writer, who flourished in more recent times, during the Renaissance, the holy and learned Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, to whom the cause of Christian education is greatly indebted, has set forth most clearly this well established point of Catholic doctrine. He had been a disciple of that wonderful educator of youth, St. Philip Neri; he was teacher and Latin secretary to St. Charles Borromeo, and it was at the latter's suggestion and under his inspiration that he wrote his splendid treatise on The Christian Education of Youth. In it he argues as follows:

"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."

 

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the best citizens are well-informed and well-formed Catholics who are trying to save their immortal souls as Catholics in cooperation with the graces won for them by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood and which flow forth from the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, who has the absolute right to be honored as the Queen of all nations. It is that simple. Catholic truth reflects the simplicity of God Himself.

Penetratingly, Pope Pius XI eviscerated the theories that underlain the work of Horace Mann in the Nineteenth Century and were being promoted in his own day by the likes of the pragmatist John Dewey:

 

Hence every form of pedagogic naturalism which in any way excludes or weakens supernatural Christian formation in the teaching of youth, is false. Every method of education founded, wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound. Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a pretended self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher's authority and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or divine, in the work of his education.

If any of these terms are used, less properly, to denote the necessity of a gradually more active cooperation on the part of the pupil in his own education; if the intention is to banish from education despotism and violence, which, by the way, just punishment is not, this would be correct, but in no way new. It would mean only what has been taught and reduced to practice by the Church in traditional Christian education, in imitation of the method employed by God Himself towards His creatures, of whom He demands active cooperation according to the nature of each; for His Wisdom "reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly."

But alas! it is clear from the obvious meaning of the words and from experience, that what is intended by not a few, is the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law. So today we see, strange sight indeed, educators and philosophers who spend their lives in searching for a universal moral code of education, as if there existed no decalogue, no gospel law, no law even of nature stamped by God on the heart of man, promulgated by right reason, and codified in positive revelation by God Himself in the ten commandments. These innovators are wont to refer contemptuously to Christian education as "heteronomous," "passive","obsolete," because founded upon the authority of God and His holy law.

Such men are miserably deluded in their claim to emancipate, as they say, the child, while in reality they are making him the slave of his own blind pride and of his disorderly affections, which, as a logical consequence of this false system, come to be justified as legitimate demands of a so-called autonomous nature.

Ah, what did I say about slavery a while back? Anyone who does not place himself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer through the Catholic Church is a slave to many people and things, including his own blind pride. Any country which does not place itself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer's Social Kingship is a slave to the devil and becomes an oppressor of its people. Who desires "pedagogic naturalism?" Who desires "the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law?" Not Our Lord, ladies and gentlemen. It is the adversary himself who desires these things. It is he who has been in control of American popular culture from its very inception. The devil reigns as king if Our Lord does not do so through His true Church. It is that simple. Anyone care to dissent from this plain truth?

Pope Pius XI completely and utterly rejected the whole notion of public schooling, allowing for rare exceptions in certain cases given the actual realities facing Catholics in places like the United States of America. As a matter of principle, however, Pope Pius XI minced no words: public schooling is a menace to souls and harmful to nations because it does not proceed from man's First Cause nor lead man back to his Last End:

From this it follows that the so-called "neutral" or "lay" school, from which religion is excluded, is contrary to the fundamental principles of education. Such a school moreover cannot exist in practice; it is bound to become irreligious. There is no need to repeat what Our Predecessors have declared on this point, especially Pius IX and Leo XIII, at times when laicism was beginning in a special manner to infest the public school. We renew and confirm their declarations, as well as the Sacred Canons in which the frequenting of non-Catholic schools, whether neutral or mixed, those namely which are open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is forbidden for Catholic children, and can be at most tolerated, on the approval of the Ordinary alone, under determined circumstances of place and time, and with special precautions. Neither can Catholics admit that other type of mixed school, (least of all the so-called "école unique," obligatory on all), in which the students are provided with separate religious instruction, but receive other lessons in common with non-Catholic pupils from non-Catholic teachers.

For the mere fact that a school gives some religious instruction (often extremely stinted), does not bring it into accord with the rights of the Church and of the Christian family, or make it a fit place for Catholic students. To be this, it is necessary that all the teaching and the whole organization of the school, and its teachers, syllabus and text-books in every branch, be regulated by the Christian spirit, under the direction and maternal supervision of the Church; so that Religion may be in very truth the foundation and crown of the youth's entire training; and this in every grade of school, not only the elementary, but the intermediate and the higher institutions of learning as well. To use the words of Leo XIII:

"It is necessary not only that religious instruction be given to the young at certain fixed times, but also that every other subject taught, be permeated with Christian piety. If this is wanting, if this sacred atmosphere does not pervade and warm the hearts of masters and scholars alike, little good can be expected from any kind of learning, and considerable harm will often be the consequence."

Do I mean to condemn Catholics who teach or serve as administrators in public schools? No. Do I mean to expose my readers to papal condemnations of these schools as illegitimate and thus harmful to the souls of their students and to the good of their nations? Yes.

Moreover, I mean to remind my readers once again that there is no secular, naturalistic, non-denominational or religiously indifferentist way to "resolve" problems associated with public schooling. Just as the abuses witnessed by so many Catholics in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service are the result of the Novus Ordo's s warfare against the Catholic Faith, so is it the case that the problems in public schooling, much like the problems with "judicial activism," are the result of the Protestant Revolt and of Judeo-Masonry. There is no expedient solution to problems that have been created by diabolically-inspired attacks against Our Lord and His Holy Church.

Those of us who are parents, no matter how old (in my case) or young we may be, have the obligation to avoid all contact with public schooling entirely. We have the obligation also to avoid all contact with schools run by the institutions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism (diocesan or religious) given the influence of Modernism and the concomitant conciliarist ethos spawned in its sorry wake. Similarly, we have the obligation to avoid contact with even a seemingly traditional school that makes any concession to the popular culture and/or does not demand a complete refusal on the part of parents and students to participate in any way with a culture that is from the devil and leads souls to Hell for all eternity. This is not Jansenism. This is Catholicism. The saints did not indulge the allurements of the world. They fled from them for love of God and for the love of souls for whom He offered His very life on the wood of the Holy Cross. No "traditional" school that does not inculcate in its students a manifest sense of resistance to the culture and which does not instill in its students an abiding commitment to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King is a fit place to send one's children.

Similarly, schools that purport to be traditional but which do not have teachers qualified to teach the subjects assigned (or who do not have the ability to teach in general) to them and/or who are not called upon by their superiors to challenge their students to pursue the heights of  the rigors of academic excellence as befits redeemed creatures are unworthy of the souls of our children. Mediocrity is not of the Catholic Faith. Anyone who is content with educational mediocrity is content with the Capital Sin of Sloth.

Are there schools that teach children to avoid the culture and promote the Social Reign of Christ the King? Yes. They are few and far between, however.

What, then, should parents do in those instances when a wonderful school such as Saint Dominic's Academy in Monroe, Connecticut, is not available to them, admitting that some people's circumstances may not admit of the answer that follows? We home-school our children. No, not in "groups" with children who are still assisting at the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. Not in "groups" with even our fellow traditional Catholics who believe that it is not necessary to oppose the errors of ecumenism and religious liberty and who refuse to remove themselves from any and all compromising tendencies. We home-school our children in our own homes. The grace-of-state exists in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony to equip parents to teach their children well to pursue academic excellence for the greater honor and glory of God through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart in a highly-structured atmosphere. This is being done consistently well in countless traditional Catholic homes across the nation and the world. Anyone, whether priest or lay man, who denies the good being done in Catholic homes to teach children about the perennial truths of the Faith and to thus seek excellence in all of their studies is denying reality and denigrating the graces, both sanctifying and actual, that flow from the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

Pope Pius XI summarized the essence of Catholic education. These words must shape the efforts of each one of us to teach our children unto their eternal welfare:

The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ Himself in those regenerated by Baptism, according to the emphatic expression of the Apostle: "My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you."For the true Christian must live a supernatural life in Christ: "Christ who is your life," and display it in all his actions: "That the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

For precisely this reason, Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral, individual, domestic and social, not with a view of reducing it in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect it, in accordance with the example and teaching of Christ.

Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character. For, it is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy in following the eternal principles of justice, as is admitted even by the pagan poet when he praises as one and the same "the man who is just and firm of purpose." And on the other hand, there cannot be full justice except in giving to God what is due to God, as the true Christian does.

To liberate the captives from America's concentration camps, therefore, we must, especially in this Season of Septuagesima, start to think about intensifying our lives of prayer, penance, fasting, mortification, and almsgiving during the Lenten season that starts on Ash Wednesday, February 21, 2007,, uniting each of our efforts to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as her consecrated slaves. We must be Catholic in everything we say and do. We must give no quarter to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and those of us who did give such a quarter for far too long in our own lives must seek to live the rest of our lives in such a way as to undo the damage we did when we were too cavalier in our blithe acceptance of things contrary to the good of souls, including our own, and thus the good of our nation. Our efforts to "recover by penance what we have lost by sin" will help us to be better guides as we try to lead our children home to Heaven to gaze upon the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity. Revised: America's Concentration Camps

 

Insofar as the particular situation in California at the present time is concerned, we must keep in mind that the Court of Appeals there has ruled against homeschooling as it has as a direct result of the degenerative processes that are part and parcel of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King. As well-meaning as some efforts led by largely Protestant organizations (such as the Home School Legal Defense Association in Virginia) to seek a reversal or what is called a de-publication of the Court of Appeals ruling, it appears to me that the efforts, which are nascent and will undergo refinement, I am sure, as the weeks progress, might be based, at least in part, on a claim of "religious freedom," one of the fundamental heresies of Modernity in the world and Modernism, especially as expressed by the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Efforts to oppose the evils of the day must proceed on the basis of correct principles. Religious freedom, at least as it commonly understood, is not a correct principle upon which to base an effort to oppose statism, admitting that the issue can be framed in a way that is not at all objectionable and would be in line with Pope Leo XIII's teaching on toleration as found in Libertas, June 20, 1888, adverting to the Natural Law rights of parents to serve as the primary educators of their children. The Catholic Church, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Libertas, provides her children with a generous grant of legitimate freedom to act in concrete circumstances as long as they keep in mind right principles and do not permit themselves to tolerate more evil than is necessary for the preserving of the greater good:

 

Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue. In the government of States it is not forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the world; and, as the authority of man is powerless to prevent every evil, it has (as St. Augustine says) to overlook and leave unpunished many things which are punished, and rightly, by Divine Providence. But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, "neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good.'' This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil.

But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind. One thing, however, remains always true -- that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.

And as to tolerance, it is surprising how far removed from the equity and prudence of the Church are those who profess what is called liberalism. For, in allowing that boundless license of which We have spoken, they exceed all limits, and end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty. And because the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and the unerring teacher of morals, is forced utterly to reprobate and condemn tolerance of such an abandoned and criminal character, they calumniate her as being wanting in patience and gentleness, and thus fail to see that, in so doing, they impute to her as a fault what is in reality a matter for commendation. But, in spite of all this show of tolerance, it very often happens that, while they profess themselves ready to lavish liberty on all in the greatest profusion, they are utterly intolerant toward the Catholic Church, by refusing to allow her the liberty of being herself free.

 

Although I have come to be quite opposed to "petition drives" as quintessential expressions of the Americanist spirit, I do nevertheless realize that there are times when such drives can give executives of a corporation pause to reconsider some marketing or advertising program and have some influence in the course of public policy decision-making. Each person will have to proceed on the current petition drive being circulated about the situation in California as he sees fit. My own personal judgment, which is far from infallible and is based upon a review of the initial strategy proposed by a Protestant organization, is to wait and see what kind of legal argument is advanced before rendering my own support. Words matter. Truth must triumph over the emotion and sentimentality and the "rush" of the moment.

In the meantime, of course, we can submit our own reasoned letters to the Court of Appeals in California, making copies of same and sending them to the nefarious pro-abortion Catholic who is Governor of the State of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and to other elected representatives in California. We can oppose the Court of Appeals decision in California without associating ourselves with any particular petition drive, although, as noted above, this is a matter of true freedom about which each person must decide for himself.

The legal obstacles are quite steep here. The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters ruled that state governments could not compel attendance of students in public schools. States could, however, compel attendance in some kind of school. This is what has been ruled by the Court of Appeals in California. This is but the logic of the degenerative processes that have been at work in the world since the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the Sixteenth Century, a subject, no doubt, that will be discussed at length in the "Ratzinger Shuller" this summer as its participants evaluate the "teachings and influence" of Father Martin Luther, O.S.A. (My tongue, in case you did not notice the subtlety, is planted firmly in my cheek.)

There is, of course, a particular irony in all of this. The Catholic Church should be taking the lead to defend the Natural Law right of parents to be the primary educators of their children, not an organization founded on the false principles of Protestantism that are so responsible for the rise of statism (a little fact that well-meaning Protestants simply do not want to consider!). Thus it is that Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide tend to gravitate to the "leadership" provided by Protestant organizations on various matters. This is all so very diabolical. Remember, it was the Catholic Church in the United States of America that started the Legion of Decency in 1933. The Protestants concerned about decency in motion pictures followed the Catholic lead. It is this way no more as conciliarism has made its "reconciliation" with the principles of Modernism, including many of those associated with Protestantism itself.

What appears to be the Catholic Church, that is, the counterfeit church of conciliarism, however, has forced many Catholic parents to homeschool their children in order to escape from the Modernism rampant in Catholic schools that are now in conciliar control, to say nothing of parents wanting to preserve their children from being immersed in the rot of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. The apparatchiks of the conciliar miseducational apparatus in the United States of America are adamantly opposed to homeschooling! Even homeschooling Catholics who are as of yet attached to the Novus Ordo service find themselves battling parish and diocesan officials to keep their children out of "religious education" programs that require children to be indoctrinated in matters pertaining to Chastity, including propaganda in favor of the agenda of perversity, in order to receive the bogus administration of "confirmation" at the hands of a conciliar "bishop." Catholic homeschooling parents in California will find few allies in the conciliar structures, whose "officials" would love to get their hands on more souls to deform with the rot of conciliarism and explicit instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

Although there are some lay organizations in the Novus Ordo structures which will seek to file what is known as an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in support of homeschooling parents, most, although not all, of these will do so on the false grounds of the conciliar notion of "religious freedom" rather than to assert the absolute, immutable Natural Law right of parents to serve as the primary educators of their children. A few conciliar "bishops" might express their support along the way. Take the lead? Probably not. Thus it is that Catholics all across the ecclesiastical divide jump on an opportunity to support Protestant-based efforts that are founded in the very principles that gave us the problems we are facing.

It is important, as always, to see beyond the "trees" of the given moment. The court decision in California on the issue of homeschooling is just a portent of greater state control of our daily lives. A "victory" of some sort can be won here and there, now and again. It is not wrong to seek to retard various evils as best as we can do so, praying the Rosary, for example, with other fully traditional Catholics in front of an abortuary. Indeed, it is quite virtuous to do so as long as our efforts are premised upon right principles. There is a world beyond the "trees" of any given crisis, however, a world that we must keep in mind at all times. It is the world of First and Last Things that is supposed to define how we act in this passing, mortal value of tears so that we can get home to Heaven by dying in a state of Sanctifying Grace as a member of the Catholic Church.

Absent a recognition of the authority of the Catholic Church, however, statism must prevail more and more as the years progress. We must, therefore, intensity our prayers during Passiontide for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, giving to that Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart all of the merits we might earn from our prayers and sufferings and indulgenced acts and humiliations and mortifications so that they may be enfolded in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. We must make reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world as the consecrated slaves of the Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, keeping fast to Our Lady's Fatima Message of prayer and penance and reparation as best we can.

The best way that we can combat the errors of the day is by spiritual, not temporal means. We are fighting the forces of darkness, as Saint Paul himself reminds us in his Epistle to the Ephesians:

 

Not serving to the eye, as it were pleasing men, but, as the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart, With a good will serving, as to the Lord, and not to men. Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond, or free. And you, masters, do the same things to them, forbearing threatenings, knowing that the Lord both of them and you is in heaven; and there is no respect of persons with him. Finally, brethren, be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of his power.

Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace:

In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints: And for me, that speech may be given me, that I may open my mouth with confidence, to make known the mystery of the gospel. For which I am an ambassador in a chain, so that therein I may be bold to speak according as I ought. (Eph. 6: 16-20.)

 

Assistance at Daily Mass is so important to help us keep our focus on the real battle that we are fighting, both in our own daily lives and in the larger life of our nations, as Father Frederick Faber in The Foot of the Cross (published originally under the title of The Dolors of Mary):

It is out of peace that love will come, such burning yet such humble love as becomes the worship of the Blessed Sacrament. Our reverence cannot have been right at the first if love does not follow. When fear, and shrinking, and avoidance comes to souls with regard to the Blessed Sacrament, it is so much the want of love to which we must look as the want of reverence. Reverence infallibly provides for love. But the love of the Blessed Sacrament must be a growth of inward peace and spiritual tranquility. Very often we love less than we should love if we made less effort to love. Our faith tells us such overwhelming things of this divine mystery, that it seems a shame, almost a sin, that we are not burning with sensible love all the day long. Jesus Himself so near, so accessible, so intimately uniting Himself to us, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Calvary actually here, and we so cold, so moderate, so commonplace! Surely we ought to be burnt up as with the fires of the Seraphim. It is true. Yet for all that we cannot force ourselves. It is better to turn our vexation into self-hatred and self-contempt than to try to create an interior vehemence, which, after all, is a different thing from divine love. The love of the Blessed Sacrament is daily and lifelong. Surely it is not likely that such a love should be always, or even most often, sensible. Do we go to Mass on week-days at our own inconvenience? Are we punctual and reverential in our daily visit to the Blessed Sacrament? Do we hear Mass with devout attention? Are our preparations for Communion and our thanksgiving after it among those actions which we practically confess to rank as the most important of our lives? Do we give up exercise, pleasure, visiting, study, and the like, or at least interrupt them, to go to Benediction, when it is in our power? These are better proofs of an acceptable love of the Blessed Sacrament than the warmest transports or the most glowing heat in our hearts. Perseverance is the real divine heat in our hearts. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in 1857 in England under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 320-321.)

 

Our Lady stood at the foot of the Cross of her Divine Son on Good Friday. She stands by the foot of the Cross of her Divine Son as Calvary is re-presented in an unbloody manner by a true alter Christus acting in persona Christi. Should we not want to stand with her every day of our lives, remembering that, as Father Faber himself noted, "Where there is no Mass, there is no Christianity."

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

 

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

The Forty Holy Martyrs, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints