Recipe for Tyranny

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Violent street protests have occurred in several European countries, including Greece and France, as the social engineering of the monstrous modern welfare state have brought member states of the European Union to the point of fiscal bankruptcy and social chaos. Generations upon generations of people have become used to be veritable wards of the state from the cradle to the grave, expecting that their every need will be attended by the "Santa Claus" of the civil state, which can thus "resolve" all of the problems of the world without any effort on their parts to reform lives that are spent in almost unlimited pleasure-seeking. It is difficult for people who have grown used to the sense of entitlement that has been brought about by the welfare state of Modernity to envision any alteration of the "goodies" that they believe must be given unto them lest they take to the streets in violence.

The latest country in which violent protests have broken out is the United Kingdom. College students are upset that the the new Conservative-Labour coalition government has proposed an austerity budget that is going to require them to pay more for their college education. Protesters turned against Prince Charles and his consort, the Duchess of Cornwall, Princess Camilla, as they were on their way to the London Palladium yesterday evening:

LONDON — Britain’s coalition government survived the most serious challenge yet to its austerity plans on Thursday when Parliament narrowly approved a sharp increase in college fees. But violent student protests in central London, including an attack on a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles, to the theater, provided a stark measure of growing public resistance

The 62-year-old heir to the British throne and his 63-year-old wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, were said by palace officials to have been unharmed in the episode. The confrontation occurred when a group of about 50 protesters, some in full-face balaclavas, broke through a cordon of motorcycle police flanking the car as it approached London’s theater district in slow-speed traffic. Some of the demonstrators shouted “off with their heads!” and others “Tory scum!”

A photograph of the couple, in formal evening dress, showed them registering shock as protesters beat on the side of their armored, chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce with sticks and bottles, smashing a side window, denting a rear panel and splashing the car with white paint. A Jaguar tailing the car and carrying a palace security detail was so battered that the police ended up using its doors as shields.

Prime Minister David Cameron called the attack on the royal couple’s car “shocking and regrettable.”

Other violence across the city center continued into the night, with demonstrators trying to smash their way into the Treasury building at the heart of the Whitehall government district with makeshift rams made from steel crowd barriers, shouting “We want our money back!” The protesters set small fires and clashed with riot police officers and mounted units that formed cordons outside government buildings. BBC reporters at the scene wore helmets as the rioters threw shattered blocks of steel-reinforced concrete.

Scotland Yard said at mid-evening that at least 12 police officers were injured, six of them seriously, including one who was taken unconscious to the hospital after falling or being pulled off his horse. At that point, one large fire was still burning in front of the Palace of Westminster, seat of the House of Commons. At the height of the unrest, rioters threw snooker balls, lighted flares and fireworks at the police, and tried to topple statues in Westminster Square, across from the Commons. At least 43 were arrested.

The violence provided a disturbing backdrop to the day’s political events, which were themselves a watershed moment for the seven-month-old coalition government of Mr. Cameron. Ahead of the parliamentary vote on the college fee increase, the government confronted a difficult rupture as the Liberal Democrats, who are the coalition’s junior partners, split among themselves, raising questions over the coalition’s long-term survival.

Although half of the Liberal bloc in the House of Commons voted against the tuition fee increase, the coalition won the vote by a margin of 323 to 302 votes. The 21-vote margin was far short of the coalition’s nominal 84-vote majority, and threatened at one point to dwindle even further as Liberal leaders considered abstaining in a bid to keep their party together. In the end, the Liberal leader Nick Clegg and other Liberal ministers voted for the increase, though two Liberal ministerial aides resigned. (Protesters Attack Car Carrying Prince Charles.)

 

There is a special irony that the violent street protests that have plagued the cities of Athens, the home of the Greek schism that was but a precursor of the Protestant Revolution, and Paris, the home of the anti-Theistic French Revolution, the prototype of all modern social revolutions, have spread to London, the home of the Protestant Revolution in England that overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King and provided the recipe for the unchecked tyranny of King Henry VIII and his wicked daughter by Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I, and subsequent monarchs that set the stage of the tyranny of majority following the overthrow of King James II in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. Protestantism was, of course, a protest against the Divine Plan instituted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church.

The Protestant Revolt engendered murder and mayhem in the German states after it was launched by the hideous, lecherous, drunken Augustinian monk named Father Martin Luther, O.S.A., on October 31, 1517, when he posted his "ninety-five theses" on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther himself was aghast to see the almost instantaneous moral degeneration of his "evangelicals" into violent mobs who pilfered and sacked formerly Catholic churches and lived riotously, oblivious to the fact that he was responsible for this degeneration by depriving those who followed his revolution against Christ the King of the Sacraments and of the true teaching that Our King has entrusted to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.

In like manner, of course, the the Protestant Revolt in England engendered murder and violence, much of which was state-sponsored as Henry Tudor was responsible between the years of 1534 and 1547 for ordering the executions of over 72,000 Catholics who remained faithful to the Catholic Church following the decree that Parliament has passed that declared him to be the "supreme head of the Church in England as far as the law of God allowed." As was the case in the German states as princes gave Luther protection so that they, the princes, could govern in a Machiavellian manner free of any interference from Rome or their local bishops, so was it the case in England that the Protestant Revolution provided the receipt for the unchecked tyranny of English monarchs.

Indeed, the kind of state-sponsored social engineering that has created the culture of entitlement in England and elsewhere in Europe has its antecedent roots in Henry's revolt against the Social Reign of Christ the King and His Catholic Church in the Sixteenth Century.

Henry had Parliament enact various laws to force the poor who had lived for a nominal annual fee on the monastery and convent lands (as they produced the food to sustain themselves, giving some to the monastery or convent) off of those lands, where their families had lived for generations, in order to redistribute the Church properties he had stolen to those who supported his break from Rome. Henry quite cleverly created a class of people who were dependent upon him for the property upon which they lived and the wealth they were able to derive therefrom, making them utterly supportive of his decision to declare himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. Those of the poorer classes who had been thrown off of the monastery and convent lands were either thrown into prison (for being poor, mind you) or forced to migrate to the cities, where many of them lost the true Faith and sold themselves into various vices just to survive. The effects of this exercise of state-sponsored engineering are reverberating in the world today, both politically and economically. Indeed, many of the conditions bred by the disparity in wealth created by Henry's land grab in the Sixteenth Century would fester and help to create the world of unbridled capitalism and slave wage that so impressed a German emigre in London by the name of Karl Marx. Unable to recognize the historical antecedents of the real injustices he saw during the Victorian Era, Marx set about devising his own manifestly unjust system, premised on atheism and anti-Theism, to rectify social injustice once and for all. In a very real way, Henry of Tudor led the way to Lenin of Russia.

The abuses of power by English monarchs led to all manner of social unrest in England, especially as those Anglicans who were followers of John Calvin sought to eradicate all remaining vestiges of Catholicism from Anglican "worship" and "doctrine" (removing Latin from certain aspects of the heretical Anglican liturgy, smashing statues, eliminating high altars in favor of tables, things that have been undertaken in the past forty years in many formerly Catholic churches that are now in the custody of the counterfeit church of conciliarism). This unrest produced the English Civil Wars of the 1640s and the establishment in 1649 of what was, for all intents and purposes, a Calvinist state under the control Oliver Cromwell that became a Cromwellian dictatorship between the years of 1653 to 1660 until the monarchy under the House of Stuart was restored in 1660. Oh yes, King Charles I lost his head, quite literally, in 1649 as the "Roundheads" of Oliver Cromwell came to power in 1649 following seven years of warfare between "parliamentarians" and "royalists." Revolutions always wind up eating their own. The English monarchy itself was eaten up by the overthrow of the Social Reign of the King of Kings by Henry VIII of the House of Tudor in 1534.

King James II, who had converted to Catholicism in France in 1668 while he was the Prince of York under his brother, King Charles II of the restored monarchy, acceded to the English throne in on June 6, 1885, following his brother's death, which occurred after Charles II himself had converted to the the Faith on his deathbed. Suspicious that the property that had been acquired and the wealth that had been amassed as a result of Henry VIII's social-engineering land grab of 150 years before would be placed in jeopardy, Protestant opponents of King James II eventually forced him to abdicate the throne in 1688, his rule having been declared as ended on December 11 of that year. The abdication of King James, whose second wife, Mary of Modena, had been assigned Blessed Father Claude de la Colombiere as her spiritual director when she was the Princess of York, is referred to by Protestant and secular historians as the "glorious revolution," so-called because it ushered in the penultimate result of the Protestant Revolution, the tyranny of the majority.

It was to justify the rise of majoritarianism that John Locke, a Presbyterian (Calvinist) minister, wrote his Second Treatise on Civil Government. Locke believed, essentially, that social problems could be ameliorated if a majority of reasonable men gathered together to discuss their situation. The discussion among these "reasonable men" would lead to an agreement, sanctioned by the approval of the majority amongst themselves, on the creation of structures which designed to improve the existing situation. If those structures did not ameliorate the problems or resulted in a worsening of social conditions then some subsequent majority of "reasonable men" would be able to tear up the "contract" that had bound them before, devising yet further structures designed to do what the previous structures could not accomplish. Locke did not specify how this majority of reasonable men would form, only that it would form, providing the foundation of the modern parliamentary system that premises the survival of various governments upon the whims of a majority at a given moment.

In other words, England's "problem" in 1688 was King James II. The solution? Parliament, in effect, declared that he had abdicated his throne rather than attempt to fight yet another English civil war to maintain himself in power as the man chosen by the parliamentarians to replace him, his own son-in-law William of Orange, who was married to his daughter Mary, landed with armed forces ready to undertake such a battle. The parliamentary "majority" had won the day over absolutism and a return to Catholicism.

Unfortunately for Locke, you see, social problems cannot be ameliorated merely by the creation of structures devised by "reasonable men" and sanctioned by the majority.

All problems in the world, both individual and social, have their remote causes in Original Sin and their proximate causes in the Actual Sins of men. There is no once-and-for-all method or structure by which, for example, "peace" will be provided in the world by the creation of international organizations or building up or the drafting of treaties.

There is no once-and-for-all method or structure by which, for example, "crime" will be lessened in a nation by the creation of various programs designed to address the "environmental" conditions that are said to breed it.

The only way in which social conditions can be ameliorated is by the daily reformation of individual lives in cooperation with the graces won for men by the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. And to the extent that social structures can be effective in addressing and ameliorating specific problems at specific times in specific places those who create and administer them must recognize their absolute dependence upon God's graces and that there is no secular, non-denominational or inter-denominational way to provide for social order. Social order and peace among nations depend entirely upon the subordination of the life of every person and the activities of every nation to the Social Reign of Christ the King as it is exercised by the Catholic Church.

The modern state is founded on the specific and categorical rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it is exercised by the Catholic Church. There is thus the need for modern man for find sterile ideologies or philosophies to substitute for the true Faith so as to guide "him" in the course of daily life. The failure of the social structures fashioned after the Lockean model to effect an amelioration of the problems they were intended to address does nothing to deter "true believers" from continuing to persist in the blindness that led them to reject the true Faith and to trust in their own cooked-up schemes.

No, the "true believers" in liberalism or conservatism or capitalism or socialism or communism or fascism or Nazism or utilitarianism or pragmatism or positivism (or any and all other brands of secular "isms") must spend their entire lives searching for a "better way" to realize the goals of their particular ideology or philosophy or economic system. It cannot possibly be, they have convinced themselves, that their initial premises were wrong from the outset. No, the problem must be in the implementation and/or in the communication of their ideas, not in the false nature of the ideas upon which they have based all of their truly delusional hopes. Isn't this what Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus, Barack Hussein Obama, has contended since the results of the elections on November 2, 2010?

The Lockean construct for the resolution of social problems is but one part of the Revolution, as it was termed by Popes Pius VI, VIII, VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Saint Pius X, against the Faith. The Lockean construct preceded the rise of contemporary Freemasonry in England by twenty-nine years, fitting in nicely with the Judeo-Masonic desire to obliterate the necessity of subordinating all things in personal and social life to the reality of the Incarnation by stressing the conviction that the "universal brotherhood of men" can put aside "denominational differences" to pursue the "common good." Locke's belief that men can resolve their social problems by the creation of structures, in essence the self-redemptive heresy of semi-Pelagianism, also dovetailed into the Judeo-Masonic belief that men can pursue "civic virtue" on their own without belief in, access to or cooperation with sanctifying grace. These false beliefs lead men and their societies into complete and utter chaos, which is the goal of the chief revolutionary, the devil himself, who desires the minds of men to be locked up by the blindness engendered by their narcissism and pride.

The Lockean construct leads to many mutations, all of which have one common theme: the ability of man to better his lot in life on his own without subordinating himself to the Deposit of Faith that the God-Man has entrusted to His true Church.

In the United States, for example, the Lockean construct has produced a situation where men liberalism had to give way to the socialism that has been creeping up on us in the past century since the administrations of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

The failure of incremental, structural "reforms" to improve social conditions led to an increase in the size and the power of government at all levels (state, local, national) and a reduction in the legitimate natural law rights of citizens to be free from the tyranny of governmental leaders possessed of the nation that secular salvation comes from the state.

Thus, the New Freedom of Woodrow Wilson was actually a descent into statism, especially as represented by the creation of the Federal Reserve System, expedited by the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and by many of the policies of his immediate predecessor, Herbert Clark Hoover), and expanded by Lyndon Baines Johnson's "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" programs. The attempts to "engineer" the better society through government programs has reached such a stage that even thought itself is being punished at the state law (and laws are pending on the national level to make criticism of the behavior of certain people a "hate" crime). A land born in the delusional belief that man can ever be "free" without Our Lord and His Holy Church produces all to logically and inexorably a new caste of slaves, most of who are so diverted by bread and circuses that they protest nary a bit as their legitimate freedoms and property are taken away from them bit by bit under one pretext or another. All of this, however, was but a prelude to the socialism of the present moment, including stimulus packages and ObamaCare and the pork-barreling that squanders so many billions of taxpayer dollars (pork-barreling goes by the more commonly-known name of "earmarks" today).

Elsewhere, however, the Lockean construct leads to a degree of violent frustration. That is, the failure of structural reforms to, say, "end" poverty or to "end" wars convinced a number of visionaries that violent, bloody revolutions were necessary to overthrow the remaining vestiges of Catholicism in order to replace it all at once with a man-made paradigm for peace and justice on earth. The French Revolutionaries, the Mexican Revolutionaries, the plotters of the Italian Risorgimento, Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf in Germany, the Bolshevik and Maoist Revolutionaries--and scores upon scores of others--believed that their revolutions would bring about a new age for mankind. The failure of even those "once-and-for-all" revolutions, however, to produce their expected results led to attempts to revitalize the revolutionary zeal, a "reform of the reform," if you will. And thus it will ever be with minds that have rejected the simple truth that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order as they have been shaped by the demonically inspired naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, semi-Pelagian delusions of Modernity.

The violent street protests in various countries of Europe that have seen overgrown urchins of all ages complain about any threats to their precious entitlements are simply the natural, logical byproducts of a world steeped in the aftermath of one violent revolution after another against the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. Men must give vent to anger and outrage, yes, even in violent ways, when their immortal souls are not enlightened by the light of the Deposit of Faith and enlivened by Sanctifying Grace. Chaos is the only thing that can result when men believe that they can be "free" of Christ the King and His Holy Church.

The Protestant Revolution that engendered all of the social revolutions of Modernity is indeed a recipe for tyranny. That tyranny can take many forms (one man, a ruling elite, a military junta, a particular political party, popular or legislative or judicial majorities). However, the Protestant Revolution is indeed a recipe for all contemporary forms of tyranny, and don't any of you in the dwindling, disappearing, vanishing readership of this website think for a single moment that any Protestant or non-Catholic has a "solution" to retard the evils of the moment. That is a grand deception of the devil, and it is one that is believed and promoted with ready abandon by the likes of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and his own band of revolutionaries who reject the Social Reign of Christ the King just as much as did the first Protestant revolutionaries and the Freemasons who followed in their bloody wake.

Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Have you read that before? Good. No matter the few number of people who read these articles, those of you who continue reading the material on this site will keep being reminded of this basic truth that was enunciated so clearly by our true popes:

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely wise, good, and just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men.  It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the states and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption.  It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, it makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which It has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes  It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty.  Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

We must ever believe in the power of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, using this great spiritual weapon as a shield against sin in our own lives and as the means by which the blinded eyes and the hardened hearts of Catholics steeped in the jingoistic ways of nationalism and naturalism will be, respectively, opened and softened to accept the simple truth stated by Our Lord Himself to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque:

 

"I will reign in spite of all who oppose Me."

May it be our privilege, therefore, to plant a few seeds for the restoration of Christendom as we seek to remain faithful to Our Lady's Fatima Message. We must continue to do the work of apostles no matter the likelihood of any tangible, earthly success. We must seek to be faithful to the cause of our King by serving Him through His Immaculate Queen's Immaculate Heart, enthroning our own homes to His Most Sacred Heart and to that same Immaculate Heart, helping at least a few souls to His champions as we remember these words that Father Miguel Augustin Pro, S.J., uttered as the bullets fired at him by the Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico pierced his flesh on November 23, 1927:

 

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of Loreto, 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.

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

Pope Saint Melchiades I, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

 

Behold the only standard of true human liberty (not the "liberty bell" or the Masonic "goddess" in New York Harbor.)

The Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome, Italy, Sunday, May 22, 2005.