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August 29, 2010

Prepare Ye The Way For Antichrist

Part Four

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Prepare Ye The Way For Antichrist, part three, which was published yesterday, Saturday, August 28, 2010, the Feast of Saint Augustine and the Commemoration of Saint Hermes, provided a reminder that the false opposites of the naturalist "left" and the naturalist "right" have been used by the devil to increase the levels of evil protected by the civil law and promoted widely in all aspects of the popular culture that "good" people are willing to "tolerate" in the false belief that things will "get better" as long as some naturalist who does not support all of the most radical currents of evil being promoted at any one time is at least willing to sound like he or she is on the side of moral truth. This is one of the devil's tricks by which he has institutionalized widespread passivity, even among many Catholics, about the daily slaughter of the preborn by chemical and surgical means under cover of the civil law, a slaughter that most Americans do not let disturb their consciences in the slightest as they go about from one dog and pony show to another.

Truth be told, of course,  this is how the devil brought forth the anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian world of Modernity. He raised up bloodthirsty Protestant revolutionaries on the continent of Europe and in England and Ireland so as to make "nice," "tolerant" Protestants and Freemasons in the nascent United States of America appear as allies to the tiny minority of Catholics who lived here in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century. These "nice" and "tolerant" Protestants and Freemasons, many of whom had a founding hatred for Christ the King, believed that a generic notion of "God" was good enough for there to be the pursuit of the common temporal good.

This falsehood was exploded by Pope Leo XIII in Human Genus, April 10, 1884 (see Not A Mention of Christ the King), and in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, as he used the language of diplomacy to praise what he could about the Constitution of the United States of America and the natural virtue possessed by the Freemason George Washington (who never converted to the Catholic Faith; see Did George Washington Convert to Catholicism?, by Dr. Marian Therese Horvat, an academically trained historian; those who repeat the absolute and total myth of George Washington's nonexistent "conversion" to the Catholic Faith are doing the cause of truth a grave disservice as this myth was invented by a Jesuit priest who was possessed of the falsehoods of the Americanist heresy) while stating quite clearly that the position of the Catholic Church in the United States of America is not the model for the rest of the world:

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.

 

One will almost never find this part of Pope Leo XIII's discussion in Longiqua Oceani of the American Constitution cited by Americanist Catholics as they practice a particularly vicious and completely irresponsible form of rank intellectual dishonesty. Pope Leo XIII knew that the most of the American bishops did not want to convert the nation to the true Faith and that they were not teaching their people about his own encyclical letters that restated the Catholic teaching that is rejected by Americanists and by their chief admirer in Rome at this time, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI: namely, that it is, in the objective order of things, an obligation of the civil state to recognize the true Church as its official religion and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity. Pope Leo XIII used the following passage in Longiqua Oceani to remind the American bishops of their obligations to teach the authentic Social Teaching of the Catholic Church:

As regards civil affairs, experience has shown how important it is that the citizens should be upright and virtuous. In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied with the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs. On this whole subject there are to be found, as you know, in the encyclical letters written by Us from time to time in the course of Our pontificate, many things which Catholics should attend to and observe. In these writings and expositions We have treated of human liberty, of the chief Christian duties, of civil government, and of the Christian constitution of States, drawing Our principles as well from the teaching of the Gospels as from reason. They, then, who wish to be good citizens and discharge their duties faithfully may readily learn from Our Letters the ideal of an upright life.

 

Undaunted, however, most of the American bishops of the last decade of the Nineteenth Century continued along the heretical paths of Americanism, which Pope Leo XIII explained in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, was undermining the Faith of Catholics as Americanism was inclining them to view the Church through the lens of "democracy" and "egalitarianism" rather than viewing the world and everything in it through the eyes of the true Faith. Pope Leo XIII understood quite prophetically that the spread of the ethos of Americanism would lead to a corruption of the Faith, which we saw blossom in full force at the "Second" Vatican Council and have seen in the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes:"

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

Pope Leo XIII explained near the end of his Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, the Americanist archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 to the time of his death in 1921, that he feared that at least some of the American bishops did indeed desire the American model of the religiously indifferentist civil state, which is so praised by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, to be adopted by the Church herself as the means of "reconciling" herself to the "modern" world:

For it [an adherence to the condemned precepts of Americanism] would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive of and desire the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

 

Those who exalt the falsehoods of the naturalistic, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian philosophy of the American founding, leaving aside, as has been abundantly clear in numerous articles on this site, another reminder that Holy Mother Church leaves to the free choice of men the specific institutional arrangements by which they organize the civil governments (see the Appendix below for a further explanation of this important distinction) that are the very foundation of the apostate conciliar world views are as much of a heretic as Ratzinger/Benedict himself, who, of course, has made "religious liberty," which was near and dear to the heart of the exalted "founding fathers" as they sought to give such "liberty" to Catholics and freethinkers alike, and the American model of "separation of Church and State" that are two of the principal cornerstones of his false "pontificate."

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has told us this any number of times, including during his visit to the United States of America between April 15 and 20, 2008, and during his infamous Christmas address to his apostate curia on December 22, 2005:

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

No intellectually dishonest sound bites on this website, ladies and gentlemen. Just Catholic truth. Nothing else.

Ah, Americanists can't abide by Catholic truth thinking that the United States of America must be an "exception" to the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, that things are "different" here, that what was taught by true popes of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries does not apply to the "unique" American experience. Wrong. As Pope Leo XIII pointed out in that little quoted passage from Longiqua Oceani that puts the lie to the irresponsible assertion that the framework of the American founding made possible the growth of the Church in this country. No. A thousand times no.

The growth of the Church in the United States of America was the result of the fruits of God the Holy Ghost being poured out upon Catholics through the sacraments at a time when they had the true Mass, which served as a bulwark, at the very least, to help them to save their souls even though they were being slowly taken in by the insidious nationalistic myths about the founding and as they participated so merrily in the culture of naturalism and religious indifferentism that surrounded them. Absent the true Mass and the true sacraments, so many Catholics in the United States of America have descended to rank barbarism as they have quit all semblance of personal piety and walk around dressed in scandalously immodest ways and speak indecently in public and in private without regard for the laws of God, no less for the good of the souls of themselves and others. The Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service is a celebration of the false spirit of Modernity, which is why its lack of discipline and relative lack of mention in its collects and other prayers of personal sin and the possibility of losing one's soul for all eternity was embraced with such enthusiasm and why so few Catholics yet attached to the conciliar structures want to "go back" to the "old" ways of worshiping God (see They Like It!).

No, no country on the face of this earth is an "exception" to the immutable and perpetually binding Social Teaching of the Catholic Church that the civil state has an obligation to recognize her as the true religion and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, something that Pope Saint Pius X made clear 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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

 

One of the reasons that the men who have laid claim to the papacy in the past fifty-two years have placed themselves outside of the pale of the Catholic Church and cannot hold ecclesiastical office legitimately within her is that they have indeed not only ceased to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State but they have endorsed it wholeheartedly, something that has been very much the case during the false "pontificate" of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

Pope Pius XI also hammered home the perpetually binding nature of Catholic Social Teaching in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 22, 1923:

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14) (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

 

No, I will never tire of reminding dissenting Catholics who seek to reconcile the civil state of Modernity with the Faith that they have placed themselves outside of the pale of the Catholic Church by defecting from the teaching that the civil state has an obligation to recognize the Catholic Church as the true religion, admitting, of course, that it may not be practical or possible at a given to realize this teaching while emphasizing that true pastors of the Catholic Church never cease to instruct the faithful about this teaching and never cease to exhort them to plant seeds for the conversion of their nation to the true Faith.

Americanism, being the foundation of the conciliar worldview, has created quite a conundrum for Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Let me explain, if ever so briefly (remember, brevity is the new byword on this website, right?).

The counterfeit church of concilairism's "attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789" (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382) has unleashed a spirit of veritable rebellion on the part of those baptized Catholics who do not see why they should be "told" to oppose chemical and surgical baby-killing and perversity and immodesty and indecency when the ages-old discipline and perpetual, immutable teaching of the Catholic Church has been disparaged by "popes" and "bishops" and priests/presbyters and teachers in a variety of venues (allocutions, "encyclical" letters, "homilies," classroom lectures, "religious education" programs, etc.).

Perhaps even more to the point, of course, one of the very reasons that the liturgical conciliar revolution was implemented with such a blitzkrieg in the 1950s and 1960s was to accustom Catholics in the conciliar structure to rapid and nearly ceaseless changes in the liturgical life of the Catholic Church to such an extent that they would accept changes of certain doctrines and disciplines as nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary. If what appears to be Holy Mass can change so radically and so ceaselessly, why can't the Church "change" the "rules" about abortion and contraception and divorce and women's "ordination" to the priesthood? And even though not all of the conciliar revolutionaries desired this, of course.

However, just as Martin Luther could not see that his own revolution against the true Faith would result in a devolution of behavior in his "evangelicals" that he himself condemned vigorously but did not recognize was his own fault, so is it the case that the conciliar revolutionaries cannot see that it is the liturgical and doctrinal revolutions that they themselves helped to unleash that are responsible for the "pope" being subjected to protests and petition drives to "change" that which is immutable. Those who reject Scholastic reasoning, something that Ratzinger/Benedict shares entirely with Martin Luther, will not be able to have the true vision to see the consequences that will result from their foggy thinking and their false ideas.

Why should a Catholic believe in the immutability of the teaching of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ about the inadmissibility of women to Holy Orders when the conciliar "popes" have seen fit to make short work of the very nature of dogmatic truth and have committed blasphemous outrages against the honor and glory and majesty of the Most Blessed Trinity by esteeming the symbols of false religions and treating places of false worship as "sacred" and non-Catholic "clergymen" as having a valid mission from the true God of Divine Revelation to serve souls? If the "popes" can decide to jettison certain articles of Catholic teaching both in a de jure and de facto manner, you see, why can't ordinary Catholics exercise their "democratic rights" to demand for the absurdity of women's ordination?

This is happening right now in England and Scotland as various ultra-progressive groups of nominal Catholics are taking out advertisements on buses to demand that their "pope" give them "women priests:"

(This appeared in the Metro newspaper in London, England. It was sent to me by a reader of this site who lives in England.)

 

Why can't ultra-progressive revolutionaries within the conciliar structures "demand" for the same sort of changes on the issues that matter to them that the conciliar "popes" have made on some of the most basic truths of the Catholic Faith? There is no rationality to a thought process that can attack the very nature of dogmatic truth and give at least the appearance of approving of one false religion after another and to endorsing falsehoods such as "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State" while at the same time appearing to hold firm on abortion and women's ordination. And that is precisely the point as it takes a suspension of all rationality to believe that one can maintain some truths of the Catholic Faith while casting aspersion upon others as "obsolete."

Suspending rationality is, of course, one of the tools used by the devil to convince well-meaning people to lose all sight of the importance of adhering to the truths of the Catholic Faith without any compromise whatsoever.

This is, as noted at the beginning of this brief article, what the devil did by raising up the bloodthirsty Protestants on the continent of Europe and in England and Ireland that made the "tolerant" Protestants and Freemasons of the nascent United States of America seem "nice" and "trustworthy" by comparison. And this is what the devil has done in raising up supposedly "pro-life" public officials such as George Walker Bush who actually support the direct, intentional surgical assassination of innocent preborn children in some instances as a matter of principle and who support the chemical assassination of innocent preborn children without any exception, reservation or qualification whatsoever.

The devil made sure that he made Bush seem as a "sympathetic" figure to the legions of tooth fairy followers in the false opposite of the naturalist "right" by making sure that Bush was attacked for being "pro-life" by the screaming enemies of the naturalist "left" (who screamed loudly because it was the way for them to get "face time" on television and to raise funds for their nefarious organizations that are existence because of the falsehoods of the American nation of "civil liberty"). Some fully pro-life Catholic leaders, for example, were rendered blind, deaf and mute because of this bogus "opposition," refusing to denounce George Walker Bush for his crimes against innocent human beings in Iraq, which have included, apart from attacks that caused the death of countless thousands of Iraqis and emboldened homegrown and foreign terrorists to attack the tiny minority of Iraqi Catholics who are the descendants of those who were converted to the Faith during the Apostolic Era itself, the introduction of "family planning services" almost as soon as our troops invaded and occupied Iraq on March 20, 2003, in the name of "liberating women." No, to criticize Bush would have given credibility to the "left" and thus the thought of defending truth could not be entertained at all. This was and remains nothing other than pure irrationality as truth must always be defended, especially when one believes in a false "prudence of the flesh" that emboldens the devil to raise up more and more naturalist minions of his who will be indemnified at every turn by their supporters among Catholics who are more than willing to suspend rational thought in order to "hope" that "things" will "get better."

This is the exact strategy that has been used by the adversary to make an enemy of Christ the King and of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Blessed Precious Blood to redeem seem so sympathetic to "conservative" and "traditionally-minded" Catholics in the conciliar structures. That enemy of Christ the King and the souls He redeemed by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood is, of course, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

It is, as has been noted on this site endlessly, Ratzinger/Benedict's goal to protect the conciliar revolution from all attacks from his "right flank" so that the loud voices of protest that have come from many in the "resist but recognize" movement, including but not limited to the Society of Saint Pius X, against the new ecclesiology and false ecumenism and religious liberty and separation of Church and State and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service will be silenced once and for all as he welcomes new conciliar enthusiasts, especially from the "Anglo-Catholic 'tradition,'" into the ranks of his One World Ecumenical Church. He is willing to live with some noise from this "left flank" as he knows that those ultra-progressives will die off over the course of time and his more "moderate" (or Menshevik, if you will) version of the conciliar revolution will be accepted without complaint by "conservatives" and those in the various Motu communities whose access to the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition depends upon his own sufferance.

There is quite a parallel here between the administration of the former caesar, Georgii Bushus Ignoramus, and the current administration of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

The secular "left" more or less, but not entirely, indemnified George Walker Bush from criticism from his "right flank" for his policies of American "exceptionalism" that cost the lives of so many thousands of Americans and others and would have bankrupted this country for generations to come if he had not made possible the election of  Barack Hussein Obama, whose own statist policies have guaranteed that no future generation of Americans will be free of the burden of the national debt, and for his anti-life policies and for his violation of the Natural Law rights of personal privacy and for his violation of the division of powers between the Federal government and the state governments.

Similarly, those in the conciliar "left"--and in the secular media and within various Talmudic organizations--have more or less, but not entirely, indemnified Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI from criticism for open and blatant violations of the First and Second Commandments that seem not to matter to some of those who used to rake, and quite justifiably so, the late Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II over the coals for doing the exact same thing as Ratzinger/Benedict.

No, the "pope" must be defended when he is attacked by Talmudic organizations for his "revised" Good Friday prayer and for "lifting" the "excommunication" on Bishop Richard Williamson (and other bishops) of the Society of Saint Pius X and for plans to "beatify" Pope Pius XII.

The "pope" must be defended when his record as an enabler and indemnifier of clerical abusers is documented in the secular media as the "messengers," who certainly do have an anti-Catholic agenda, must be shot to clothe the emperor and his "bishops" who are solely responsible for giving the anti-Catholics in the secular message the ammunition they have used quite readily after decades of looking the other way as known abusers were shifted from one place to another and all too frequently promoted to the conciliar "hierarchy" itself.

The "pope" must be defended when women's "ordination" and other ultra-progressive conciliar revolutionaries seek to use the means of "democratic" pressure upon him to change what it is immutable.

Who cares if the "pope" has blasphemed God publicly?

Who cares if he has not said a word of criticism about "Archbishop" Robert Zollitsch's having denied in a publicly televised interview that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died in atonement for our sins?

Who cares if the "pope" has rejected publicly the "ecumenism of the return" that was the foundation of Catholic missionary work with Protestants and Orthodox and all other schismatics and heretics prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism?

Who cares if the "pope" has reaffirmed Jews in their false religion, making it appear as though that there is no necessity for them to convert to the true Faith before they die, that their eternal salvation is guaranteed, that they have, in effect, their own means of salvation that is parallel to that found in the Catholic Church?

Who cares if the "pope" has praised the World Missionary Conference that took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, one hundred years ago now that gave birth to the sort of ecumenism that was condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928?

Who cares if the "pope" has sold out the long-suffering underground Catholics in Red China?

Summorum Pontificum has changed everything, right? That's why the "pope" must be defended even though many of his "bishops" are not even permitting an occasion offering or simulation of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. What? Admit that one's fondest expectations of a man who has been at war with Catholic doctrine throughout the course of his priestly life as a disciple of the "new theology" that was condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, have been delusional? Never. And this is how the devil is using the false opposites (the ultra-progressive revolutionaries and the more "moderate" revolutionaries) in the counterfeit church of conciliarism to purchase consent by silence and acquiescence to outrages that offend God and harm souls.

The way is indeed being prepared for the coming of Antichrist. How are people going to recognize and denounce Antichrist if they cannot see his prefiguring in the persons of the enemies of Christ the King in the world-at-large and in the counterfeit church of concilairism today.

We must pray to Saint John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to commence His Public Ministry, to help us to persevere no matter the difficulties in our doing so, including the loss of friends, respect, prestige, and even income and career security. We can never compromise the truths of the Holy Faith for any alleged "strategy" that requires Catholics to suspend rationality and to be silent in the face of crimes against God and man that need a public reproof.

Saint John the Baptist was no respecter of persons. He spoke truth to power. King Herod knew that Saint John the Baptist was correct to criticize him for having entering into a bigamous and adulterous "marriage" with his brother Philip's wife, Herodias. He was too weak to change. He wanted to please Herodias and the daughter for whom he had an illicit eye, Salome, to whom he promised he would give half of his kingdom after she had performed a salacious dance. Prodded by her mother, Salome demanded the head of Saint John the Baptist. Herod kept his promise:

At the time Herod the Tetrarch heard the fame of Jesus. [2] And he said to his servants: This is John the Baptist: he is risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works shew forth themselves in him. [3] For Herod had apprehended John and bound him, and put him into prison, because of Herodias, his brother's wife. [4] For John said to him: It is not lawful for thee to have her. [5] And having a mind to put him to death, he feared the people: because they esteemed him as a prophet.

[6] But on Herod's birthday, the daughter of Herodias danced before them: and pleased Herod. [7] Whereupon he promised with an oath, to give her whatsoever she would ask of him. [8] But she being instructed before by her mother, said: Give me here in a dish the head of John the Baptist. [9] And the king was struck sad: yet because of his oath, and for them that sat with him at table, he commanded it to be given. [10] And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison.

 

Why are we so fearful of what others will think of us for standing up in defense of the truth? Why?

Why?

Although those of us who have seen the true state of the Church are absolutely no better than anyone else who may not see things clearly right now or who persists in adamantly rejecting even the possibility that the conciliar authorities are not true representatives of the Catholic Church on earth, it is nevertheless true that we must never let the fear of human respect get the better of us and play it "safe" as it is never "safe" to follow the devil's minions in a false church.

May Saint John the Baptist help to prepare the way for the coming of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into our hearts and souls every day of our lives by means of our worthy reception of Holy Communion (if this is at all possible where you live) and by helping us to cooperate more fully with all of the other graces sent to by Our Lord through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

Every Rosary we pray helps us poor sinners, who are in need of making frequent use of the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, to make reparation for our sins and to build up the Church Militant on earth for the day when a true pope will indeed fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message, thus ushering in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

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.

Saint Sabina, pray for us.    

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix

Distinctions Between the False Philosophy of the American Founding and the Particular Institutional Arrangements Found in the Constitution

(as contained in "From the Potomac to the Tiber and Back)

To recapitulate some basic points that I have made over and over and over again my speaking and writing in the past twenty years:

1. The American founders, many of whom reviled and blasphemed and mocked Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church (see A Founding Hatred for Christ the King), did not believe that it was necessary for men to subordinate themselves, either individually in their own lives or collectively within the body politic, to the Deposit of Faith that Our Divine Redeemer has revealed exclusively to Holy Mother Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. This is, no matter their good intentions as sons of the Protestant Revolution and of the Enlightenment, erroneous as Catholicism is but the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

2. The Americans founders believed that it was possible to maintain a good sense of social order as long as men pursue what they called "civic virtue," whether this virtue was pursued by naturalistic means or by one of a variety of religious beliefs was a matter of complete indifference to them. The founders believed that an entire nation of men could pursue virtue on a sustained basis without belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. This is the essence of semi-Pelagianism, the heretical belief that men more or less "stir up graces" in themselves to sanctify and to thus save their immortal souls.

3. As inheritors of Protestantism's legacy of the "written word" and rejection of Sacred or Apostolic Tradition that has been preserved whole and undiluted by the Catholic Church for nearly two millennia, the framers of the Constitution believed that the plain meaning of words of that document's text could be preserved from misinterpretation in the future, heedless of the fact that men will consider themselves free to deconstruct (that is, to re-define a word or a phrase or a passage in light of "contemporary needs" in such a manner as to contract the actual, objective meaning of a word or a phrase or a passage of written text) a written civil constitution as those who have revolted against the Catholic Church consider themselves free to deconstruct the inspired words of Holy Writ and to cast aside Sacred Tradition and the teaching authority of Holy Mother Church in the name "of individual interpretation." If men reject the Catholic Church as the foundation of personal and social order, you see, then men will always be at the mercy of the whims and transitory, naturalistic beliefs of whoever happens to constitute a majority in the institutions of civil government, which is nothing other than a formula for social degeneration over the course of time. (See A Catechism of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Not A Mention of Christ the King.)

4. Once again, by way of reemphasizing distinctions made repeatedly on this site, to point out the false naturalistic precepts that are at the foundation of the modern civil state, including that of the United States of America, is not to condemn the specific institutional arrangements that God and Holy Mother Church leave to the free choice of men to make in accord with legitimate national traditions and the specific contingent conditions of history. Holy Mother Church has long taught that she can adapt herself to any legitimate form of government. She does not possess the competency to interfere with men to choose to have a civil government with a presidential-congressional form or a parliamentary-ministerial form. Holy Mother Church does not interfere with men as they choose to have a unitary, confederal or federal form of national government organization in its relation to sub-national governments (state, provincial, local). She requires only that each nation in the world recognize her as the true religion and to yield to her teaching authority in all matters that pertain to the good of souls, demanding that men who serve in civil government understand that they have the solemn duty from God Himself to discharge the authority that it is justly theirs in the temporal sphere to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End.

5. Holy Mother Church does not expect the impossible from her children, which is why she has urged them to make use of the "liberties" accorded them in pluralist societies such as the United States of America to advance the cause of the Holy Faith as best as they are able. Although Holy Mother Church makes these concessions in the practical order of things in the recognition that she cannot always assert her God-given rights in every place or at every point in human history, she never ceases to preach her immutable Social Teaching and she never ceases to exhort her children to pray and to work for the conversion of their fellow countrymen and and of their countries to the true Faith.

6. Pope Leo XIII explained these points in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, praising what he could of those things in the Constitution of the United States of America that were in accord a well-ordered republic, praising even the natural virtue of George Washington, while at the same time explaining that the advance of the Faith in the United States of America was the working of God the Holy Ghost, not the American Constitution because it was not overtly hostile to the Catholic Church and granted certain "liberties" to her children as well as rank unbelievers, and that more abundant graces would flow if the civil state recognized Holy Mother Church as the true religion and accorded her the favor and protection of the laws:

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.

 

Pope Leo XIII knew that the American bishops were not teaching his social encyclical letters from the pulpit, which is why he reminded in the following passage from Longiqua Oceani that they had the obligation to do so:

As regards civil affairs, experience has shown how important it is that the citizens should be upright and virtuous. In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied with the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs. On this whole subject there are to be found, as you know, in the encyclical letters written by Us from time to time in the course of Our pontificate, many things which Catholics should attend to and observe. In these writings and expositions We have treated of human liberty, of the chief Christian duties, of civil government, and of the Christian constitution of States, drawing Our principles as well from the teaching of the Gospels as from reason. They, then, who wish to be good citizens and discharge their duties faithfully may readily learn from Our Letters the ideal of an upright life.

 

It is not to be "anti-American" to point out any of this. It is simply to point out that any false idea leads logically to bad consequences over the course of time no matter the good intentions of those who believe very sincerely in those false ideas. If it is "un" or "anti" American  to point out the false ideas of the American founding as having produced the dire consequences that we face in our nation today, then it is also "un" or "anti" Catholic to point out the false ideas of conciliarism that have produced such chaos in the institutional structures that most people associate with the Catholic Church. Correcting falsehood is Supernatural Act of Charity (instructing the ignorant, admonishing the sinner), not an act of "disloyalty" to one's nation, who numbered among its founders men, as noted above, who hated Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Holy Church.

 

 





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