Pluralist Theater of the Absurd

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

Mr. Eustace Haney: "Mister Douglas, I have a special deal for you today."

Mr. Oliver Wendell Douglas: "Haney, what is it this time?"

Haney: "Now, Mister Douglas, there's no need to get angry with me. I do have a special deal for you today."

Douglas: "All right, all right, Mr. Haney. What's your deal?"

Haney: "Well, you see here. I've got a tractor and a combine for sale. The tractor costs $700 and the combine costs four hundred dollars. However, I will send them both to to you for the special price of $1100."

Douglas, hesitating for a minute while pondering the offer, then in indigntation: "You crook you, Haney! $1100? That's no special price!"

 

Before experts on Green Acres try to find the episode containing this exact dialogue, thereby wasting their time and helping me heap more coals on my immortal soul for contributing to their waste of time, let me stipulate the dialogue above is an approximation of a scene from Green Acres that summarizes the method by which Mr. Eustace Haney, played by the late Pat Buttram, would try to hoodwink city slicker Oliver Wendell Douglas, played by the late Eddie Albert. Please don't waste your time trying to find the exact episode so that you can write to me to say that got it wrong. Repeat: the above dialogue from Green Acres, whose writers include farce as a means of social satire, is a re-creation of a particular scene that sticks out in my memory. Do not waste your time trying to "prove" anything to me. Thank you.

While we are on the subject of not wasting time, let me point out that one should not be all enthused about the entry of the ubiquitous Dr. Alan Keyes into the race for the Republican presidential nomination. While Dr. Keyes is articulate and will have many interesting things to say, making life particularly distressing for the four principal front-runners (Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, John McCain), which is a very good and efficacious thing, as well as holding Dr. Ron Paul's feet to the fire for believing that state legislatures are free to permit or restrict baby-killing as they see fit, which is not a bad thing, either, of course, he, Alan Keyes, is a quintessential Americanist to the very core of the being who opposes abortion, for example, because it is opposed, as he sees it, to the "founding principles" contained in the Declaration of Independence. He has said within my own hearing, thank you, that "We must avoid all semblance of denominationalism in our public discourse," meaning that it is not necessary to oppose various evils on the grounds of a specific religious creed. Dr. Keyes, whose Americanism is fully in accord with the ethos of conciliiarism, thereby rejects these stirring words of Pope Leo XIII, contained in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error.

 

We do not oppose abortion because of the words contained in a document written by a Deist who did not believe in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and who hated the Catholic Faith, making sure to mention Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ nowhere in his Modernist manifesto of the first completely religiously indifferentist regime in the history of the world (even the pagans of yore had a form of public pietas, state-sponsored religion, that is). We oppose abortion--and all other evils--because they are opposed to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law that Our Lord has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. We must proclaim Catholic truth at all times as it is the one and only foundation for order in the souls and hence for order in society.

Some might protest by saying that we are in such a state of moral desuetude that one would be casting his pearls before swine if he spoke in confessionally Catholic terms. Go tell that to the Apostles, who preached the Gospel to the Jews in the Holy Land before going into the far corners of the known world, including going to the heart of decadence itself and the seat of the most powerful empire that ever existed in the world, the City of Rome. Go tell that to the great missionaries who preached the Gospel to all manner of pagan and barbaric peoples without any of what the conciliarists term as "pre-evangelization." Saint Francis Solano, for instance, converted over 20,000 Indians in northern Argentina on  Holy Thursday in a matter of hours, using his ability to play a violin as the "catch" whereby the Indians would listen to him rather than murder him as they had intended to do. Catholics speak as Catholics at all times.

Conciliarists, however, speak as naturalists, convinced that pluralism is an irreversible fact of the modern world. This is a denial of the efficacy of the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Grace, to convert the souls, a process that begins by listening to the truths of the Catholic Faith, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Sapientiae Christianae:

 

So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent. Now, faith, as a virtue, is a great boon of divine grace and goodness; nevertheless, the objects themselves to which faith is to be applied are scarcely known in any other way than through the hearing. "How shall they believe Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? Faith then cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." Since, then, faith is necessary for salvation, it follows that the word of Christ must be preached. The office, indeed, of preaching, that is, of teaching, lies by divine right in the province of the pastors, namely, of the bishops whom "the Holy Spirit has placed to rule the Church of God.'' It belongs, above all, to the Roman Pontiff, vicar of Jesus Christ, established as head of the universal Church, teacher of all that pertains to morals and faith.

No one, however, must entertain the notion that private individuals are prevented from taking some active part in this duty of teaching, especially those on whom God has bestowed gifts of mind with the strong wish of rendering themselves useful. These, so often as circumstances demand, may take upon themselves, not, indeed, the office of the pastor, but the task of communicating to others what they have themselves received, becoming, as it were, living echoes of their masters in the faith. Such co-operation on the part of the laity has seemed to the Fathers of the Vatican Council so opportune and fruitful of good that they thought well to invite it. "All faithful Christians, but those chiefly who are in a prominent position, or engaged in teaching, we entreat, by the compassion of Jesus Christ, and enjoin by the authority of the same God and Savior, that they bring aid to ward off and eliminate these errors from holy Church, and contribute their zealous help in spreading abroad the light of undefiled faith.'' Let each one, therefore, bear in mind that he both can and should, so far as may be, preach the Catholic faith by the authority of his example, and by open and constant profession of the obligations it imposes. In respect, consequently, to the duties that bind us to God and the Church, it should be borne earnestly in mind that in propagating Christian truth and warding off errors the zeal of the laity should, as far as possible, be brought actively into play.

The faithful would not, however, so completely and advantageously satisfy these duties as is fitting they should were they to enter the field as isolated champions of the faith. Jesus Christ, indeed, has clearly intimated that the hostility and hatred of men, which He first and foremost experienced, would be shown in like degree toward the work founded by Him, so that many would be barred from profiting by the salvation for which all are indebted to His loving kindness. Wherefore, He willed not only to train disciples in His doctrine, but to unite them into one society, and closely conjoin them in one body, "which is the Church,'' whereof He would be the head. The life of Jesus Christ pervades, therefore, the entire framework of this body, cherishes and nourishes its every member, uniting each with each, and making all work together to the same end, albeit the action of each be not the same. Hence it follows that not only is the Church a perfect society far excelling every other, but it is enjoined by her Founder that for the salvation of mankind she is to contend "as an army drawn up in battle array.'' The organization and constitution of Christian society can in no wise be changed, neither can any one of its members live as he may choose, nor elect that mode of fighting which best pleases him. For, in effect, he scatters and gathers not who gathers not with the Church and with Jesus Christ, and all who fight not jointly with him and with the Church are in very truth contending against God

 

The counterfeit church of conciliarism rejects this. Dr. Keyes believes in the spirit of Americanism that was one of the principal progenitors of conciliarism's embrace of the heresy of "religious liberty," which Pope Pius VII termed as precisely that in Post Tam Diuturnas:

For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me."

 

Absurdity is the foundation of the American regime, which is premised on the false belief that it is not necessary for the civil state to recognize the true Faith and thus to submit itself to the authority of Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls, premised as well upon the false belief that it is possible for human beings to pursue virtue over the course of their entire lives without belief in, access to and cooperation with the Sanctifying Grace administered into their souls by the working of the God the Holy Ghost through the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII, writing in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, explained the fallacy of that last particular assertion, which is repeated over and over again by those who believe that their allegiance must be to The Federalist, not to Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen:

A thorough consideration of this point, in the supposition that no exterior guide is granted such souls, will make us see the difficulty of locating or determining the direction and application of that more abundant influx of the Holy Spirit so greatly extolled by innovators To practice virtue there is absolute need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, yet we find those who are fond of novelty giving an unwarranted importance to the natural virtues, as though they better responded to the customs and necessities of the times and that having these as his outfit man becomes more ready to act and more strenous in action. It is not easy to understand how persons possessed of Christian wisdom can either prefer natural to supernatural virtues or attribute to them a greater efficacy and fruifulness. Can it be that nature conjoined with grace is weaker than when left to herself?

Can it be that those men illustrious for sanctity, whom the Church distinguishes and openly pays homage to, were deficient, came short in the order of nature and its endowments, because they excelled in Christian strength? And although it be allowed at times to wonder at acts worthy of admiration which are the outcome of natural virtue-is there anyone at all endowed simply with an outfit of natural virtue? Is there any one not tried by mental anxiety, and this in no light degree? Yet ever to master such, as also to preserve in its entirety the law of the natural order, requires an assistance from on high These single notable acts to which we have alluded will frequently upon a closer investigation be found to exhibit the appearance rather than the reality of virtue. Grant that it is virtue, unless we would "run in vain" and be unmindful of that eternal bliss which a good God in his mercy has destined for us, of what avail are natural virtues unless seconded by the gift of divine grace? Hence St. Augustine well says: "Wonderful is the strength, and swift the course, but outside the true path." For as the nature of man, owing to the primal fault, is inclined to evil and dishonor, yet by the help of grace is raised up, is borne along with a new greatness and strength, so, too, virtue, which is not the product of nature alone, but of grace also, is made fruitful unto everlasting life and takes on a more strong and abiding character.

This overesteem of natural virtue finds a method of expression in assuming to divide all virtues in active and passive, and it is alleged that whereas passive virtues found better place in past times, our age is to be characterized by the active. That such a division and distinction cannot be maintained is patent-for there is not, nor can there be, merely passive virtue. "Virtue," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "designates the perfection of some faculty, but end of such faculty is an act, and an act of virtue is naught else than the good use of free will," acting, that is to say, under the grace of God if the act be one of supernatural virtue.

He alone could wish that some Christian virtues be adapted to certain times and different ones for other times who is unmindful of the apostle's words: "That those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son."- Romans viii, 29. Christ is the teacher and the exemplar of all sanctity, and to His standard must all those conform who wish for eternal life. Nor does Christ know any change as the ages pass, "for He is yesterday and to-day and the same forever."-Hebrews xiii, 8. To the men of all ages was the precept given: "Learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart."-Matt. xi, 29.

To every age has He been made manifest to us as obedient even unto death; in every age the apostle's dictum has its force: "Those who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences." Would to God that more nowadays practiced these virtues in the degree of the saints of past times, who in humility, obedience and self-restraint were powerful "in word and in deed" -to the great advantage not only of religion, but of the state and the public welfare.

This same point had been made by Silvio Cardinal Antoniano in the Sixteenth Century:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (quoted in Pope Pius XI's Divini Illius Magistri, December 29, 1929.)

False ideas lead to bad consequences. Each of the moral evils that Dr. Keyes opposes, frequently with unmatched eloquence, is the result of the fact that the exalted "founders" of the United States of America did not accept the fact that each human being on the face of this earth is meant to a formal member of the Catholic Church and to submit himself to the Deposit of Faith that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man entrusted solely to her. The American "founding" was and remains an exercise in semi-Pelagianism, the belief that human beings are more or less self-redemptive and that they do not need the magisterial authority and the sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church in their own lives individually or in the life of their nation collectively.

There is no non-denominational or inter-denominational way to ameliorate any of the problems caused remotely by Original Sin and proximately by Actual Sin. Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Alan Keyes, as a good Americanist and as an equally good conciliarist, rejects this basic truth and writes voluminously in praise of the dead Protestants and Freemasons responsible for writing documents that make no mention of the God-Man and place all religions and ideas on an equal footing (by virtue of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America), thus having given us a "system of errors" which "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth," called and absurdity by Pope Pius VII in Post Tam Diuturnas and insanity by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832. As important as it is to speak of the moral problems of our day, one most do so by pointing their root causes, which happen to rest in the rejection of the true Faith as the foundation of personal and social order. So what if only a few would be influenced positively. So what? Our Lord expects us to defend his Sacred Truths, not serve as apologists for Protestant heretics and Freemasonic naturalists.

The rejection of denominationalism that is one of the chief pillars of Dr. Keyes's belief that one can oppose moral evils on naturalistic or non-denominational grounds, sharing this belief, of course, with Joseph Ratzinger and conciliarsm. Unfortunately for Americanists and conciliarists, this belief has been condemned by Pope Saint Pius X 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. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body.

This being said, what must be thought of the promiscuity in which young Catholics will be caught up with heterodox and unbelieving folk in a work of this nature? Is it not a thousand-fold more dangerous for them than a neutral association? What are we to think of this appeal to all the heterodox, and to all the unbelievers, to prove the excellence of their convictions in the social sphere in a sort of apologetic contest? Has not this contest lasted for nineteen centuries in conditions less dangerous for the faith of Catholics? And was it not all to the credit of the Catholic Church? What are we to think of this respect for all errors, and of this strange invitation made by a Catholic to all the dissidents to strengthen their convictions through study so that they may have more and more abundant sources of fresh forces? What are we to think of an association in which all religions and even Free-Thought may express themselves openly and in complete freedom? For the Sillonists who, in public lectures and elsewhere, proudly proclaim their personal faith, certainly do not intend to silence others nor do they intend to prevent a Protestant from asserting his Protestantism, and the skeptic from affirming his skepticism. Finally, what are we to think of a Catholic who, on entering his study group, leaves his Catholicism outside the door so as not to alarm his comrades who, “dreaming of disinterested social action, are not inclined to make it serve the triumph of interests, coteries and even convictions whatever they may be”? Such is the profession of faith of the New Democratic Committee for Social Action which has taken over the main objective of the previous organization and which, they say, “breaking the double meaning which surround the Greater Sillon both in reactionary and anti-clerical circles”, is now open to all men “who respect moral and religious forces and who are convinced that no genuine social emancipation is possible without the leaven of generous idealism.”

 

The inter-related forces of Protestantism and the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry have produced a world wherein it is considered altogether normal for the civil state to be indifferent to the fact of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity a Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of the God the Holy Ghost. This leads quite logically and inexorably to practical atheism (the belief that there is a "God" but that one is free to disagree about Who He is and what He has revealed, if anything, to men and how to apply that in the practical order of things), as Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

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.

In the pluralist theater of the absurd that is American politics, you see, both those who support and oppose the moral evils of the day argue on grounds that are anything but an expression of the authentic Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, thereby reaffirming people in naturalism and its variants, non-denominationalism and inter-denominationalism, as the basis of public discourse. There is only one winner in this pluralist theater of the absurd: the devil, who wants men to be convinced that they can know order in their own lives and in the lives of their societies by any way at all except the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself instituted to effect the return of men to Him through His Catholic Church. Although Alan Keyes, who agrees with every candidate except Ron Paul about support for the State of Israel and the "global war on terror," will make much deserved trouble for Rudolph Giuliani and the others, each of the seemingly infinite number of candidates running for the 2008 Republican and Democrat Party presidential nominations have one essential belief in common, sharing this belief with Joseph Ratzinger and conciliarism: they reject, utterly and completely, the belief that the first obligation of the civil state is to foster those conditions in civil society wherein citizens can best sanctify and save their souls as members of the Catholic Church, as stated so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error."

 

Each of the candidates for the presidential nomination of the two major organized crime families in this nation are also united in the belief that there must be no public reference to the Mother of God, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces and is thus indispensable for the good of souls and nations. Our Lady herself in the Magnificat said that all generations would call her blessed:

And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because he that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is his name. And his mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear him. (Luke 1: 46-50.)

An American convert to Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century, Orestes Brownson, elaborate on the social significance of the Magnificat:

The distinction of being the mother of God was great, and for that all nations were to call Mary blessed; but she was more blessed in always doing the will of God, or in the possession of those virtues which led to her selection to be the mother of God. Her personal merit in always hearing and keeping the word of God was greater than in giving her consent to be his mother; and even the great merit of that consent was in its being given in perfect submission to the will of God: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word." As much as to say:" I am the servant of the Lord; his will is mine."

None but Mary alone can ever bear the honor of being the mother of God. That is hers alone, and forever distinguishes her among all women; but her virtues, those for which God chose her among all women to be his mother, are such as all, whether men or women, may in some degree possess in common with her. None can equal them, for she was , full of grace; but with the aid of grace they can approach her virtues, like her hear the word of God and keep it; and she herself did not and could not do it Without that aid. She was conceived without original stain, but yet was born of Adam's race and Christ was her Redeemer as well as ours, and she could no more enter the kingdom of heaven without regeneration than the meanest of Adam's posterity. The redeeming and elevating grace was as necessary in her case as in ours; but in her case was applied in the first instant of her conception, which, as I understand it, is the Catholic faith, and the way in which the fathers, doctors, and theologians generally understand the Immaculate Conception. Those virtues for which Mary was most blest, which are the brightest jewels in her crown, and the most brilliant ornaments of her garment of varieties, are then, as to their kind, within the reach of all, and all women may in a measure be blest as she was, by always loving and doing as she did the will of her divine Son.

I have insisted on this view, because the fact that Mary's virtues are the virtues of our own race is a reason why the devotion to her which we Catholics practice has exerted, exerts, and is fitted to exert a most salutary influence on individuals and nations, and on the manners and morals of society at large. Mary's own influence is included in that of her Son, inseparable from it, and nothing would grieve her more than an attempt to separate or even to distinguish it from his, as if she could or would be anything without him. Her great merit is in willing only what he wills, and in doing only what he inspires and enables her to do. What she does in relation to our salvation or our progress or perseverance in grace is only what he does by her. It is really he who does it, and in crowning her, he crowns his own work. He makes her the channel or medium of his grace and favors to men because he loves and delights to honor her by granting them at her request, but it is he who grants them. She is all powerful with him, and he will deny her nothing she asks for, because she asks only for that which accords with his will, and which he is more ready and willing to grant than even she is to ask. With all the love and tenderness of her woman's nature, and of her mother's heart, she cannot love us so much or so tenderly as he does. A woman may forget her sucking child, but he cannot forget us. He delights to grant her requests for her clients, because she makes no requests which he does not inspire, and because to grant these favors at her request honors her, and gives her a share in his glory. How much the world is indebted to her intercession with him, we know not, cannot know, and need not to know. Be it more or be it less, it is to him the world owes it, for it is he who filled her with grace and made her the most blessed of creatures, and it is he who inspires and listens to her intercessions, and her work is as indistinguishable from his as is the work of the church herself.

But the fact that the influence of the mother is not distinguishable from that of the Son, does not prevent us from distinguishing the influence on individuals and society of the special devotion we Catholics pay to our Lady, as a part of Christian worship in general. This influence cannot indeed be separated from the general influence of Christian faith and worship, but it may to a certain extent be distinguished, and considered by itself. It leaves everywhere distinct marks of itself, and modern civilization owes to it many of its characteristic features, and much of its immense superiority to that of Greek and Roman antiquity. (Orestes Brownson, Moral and Social Influence of Devotion to Mary.)

 

No one--and I mean no one--is truly serving the public interest if he does not encourage everyone to foster deep devotion to the Mother of God, especially through her Most Holy Rosary. One cannot appear to be "Catholic" at "Catholic" gatherings, most of which are gigantic celebrations of conciliiarism. One must be a Catholic at all times. One must think as a Catholic. One must act as a Catholic. One must love as a Catholic, willing the good of men, which is their salvation as members of the Catholic Church, and of their nations, which is their Catholicization and their submission to the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by the Catholic Church. One must speak as a Catholic. And no one speaks as a Catholic unless he exhorts all to love the Mother of God, our Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate.

What does any candidate for public office, no less one who has zero chance to win a political party's nomination or a general election, have to lose by exhorting all to love Our Lady and to fulfill her Fatima requests in their daily lives? What better time than this year, the ninetieth anniversary of her apparitions to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, to implore men to consecrate themselves and to Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary? What better path can we chart for our fellow citizens than by exhorting them to enthrone their homes to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, united by a perfect bond of unspotted love? What better contribution can we make to the eternal welfare of souls, upon which rests the fate of nations and the world, than by exhorting them to become Catholics and to rely tenderly upon Our Lady, who stands by the foot of her Divine Son's Holy Cross each time a true priest offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice He offered up to the Father in Spirit an din Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross and in which Our Lady participated fully?

The pluralist theater of the absurd will be replaced one day during the Reign of Mary Immaculate, the Queen who shall reign over men and nations along with her Divine Son, Christ the King. May our own prayers and sacrifices and acts of reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, including our offering as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, help to make up for at least a few of our own sins, which are so responsible for befouling the state of the Church and the world, and to plant a few seeds for the glorious day when all things will be restored in Christ the King as His Most Blessed Mother, the Queen of All Saints and the Queen of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope, is honored publicly with endless prayers, processions, pilgrimages and hymns.

Omnia instaurare in Christo.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

 

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

 

All to you, Blessed Mother. All to your Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Salve Regina!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, pray for us.

Saints Euphemia, Lucy, and Geminianus, pray for us.

Saint Giles, pray for us.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Saint Nicomedes, pray for us.

Saint Joseph Calasanctius, pray for us.

Pope Saint Zephyrinus, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, King of France, pray for us.

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, pray for us.

Saint Bartholomew, pray for us.

Saint Philip Benizi, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint John Eudes, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us, pray for us.

Saint Agapitus, pray for us.

Saint Helena, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.

Saints Monica, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Turibius, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Blessed Humbeline, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

Father Maximilian Kolbe,M.I., pray for us.

 

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

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

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

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

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

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

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

Response:  Amen.