Refusing Any Semblance of Mercy (Or Justice)
by Thomas A. Droleskey
One of the clearest signs of the depth of the doctrinal crisis that we face in this era of apostasy and betrayal is that it is at all necessary to restate basic Catholic truths over and over to remind Catholics in public life of their sacred duties to adhere to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as these have been entrusted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to Holy Mother Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.
Although there are some conciliar "bishops" who issue an occasional "tsk, tsk" and possibly even a "naughty, naughty," to Catholics in public life who support the nonexistent "right" of women to have the preborn children butchered under cover of civil law, there are many others who are completely silent and utter not a word of reproof to Catholics who are complicit in the daily assassination of over four thousand innocent human beings each and every day by means of surgical abortion in the United States of America alone. Worse yet, there are those, such as the president of the Master's degree alma mater, the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, "Father" John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., conciliarists who serve as stooges and enablers of the likes of President Barack Hussein Obama, a pro-abort, Marxist-trained collectivist who has filled his administration with pro-aborts and radical environmentalists and admirers of the late mass murderer named Mao Tse Tung.
"Father" Jenkins is unbent in his decision to invite Obama to give his hideous commencement address at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday, May 17, 2009 (see
Our Lady Does Not Honor Pro-Aborts,
Honors Aplenty for Devils Galore, and
No "Common Ground" Between Truth and Error), claiming in a recent interview with the South Bend Tribune (can it really be thirty-seven years ago this Saturday, January 10, 2010, that I moved to South Bend, Indiana, after complete my undergraduate studies at Saint John's University in December of 1972?) that Obama "said things that he’d never said before on the issue of abortion — such as seeking a reasonable conscience clause, such as reducing the number of abortions — and I think it was a day when there was genuine dialogue among people who differed. And that’s really what a university is about." (Notre Dame president: I'd invite Obama again).
No, "Father" Jenkins, a university is not about "dialogue among people" who differ. A university is about the dissemination of truth, the fullness of which resides only in the Catholic Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the rock of Peter, the Pope. And to refresh this poor presbyter's memory, here is a little review of what Obama said at the University of Notre Dame on May 17, 2009:
After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn't change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that - when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do - that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.
That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.
So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women."
Understand - I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it - indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory - the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature. (Text of Obama Speech at the University of Notre Dame.)
There is no "common ground" between truth and error, between good and evil. The precepts of the Fifth Commandment make it clear that it is never permissible to directly intend to kill an innocent human being as the first end of a moral act.
An expectant mother has no "decision" to make when she discovers that she is carrying a child in her womb. She has a baby to nurture unto birth and then to bring to the Baptismal font to be made a spiritual child by adoption of the Most Blessed Trinity, Whose very inner life is flooded into that baby's soul as the Original Sin and that soul's captivity to the devil is flooded out of it. There is no "decision" to be made. There is no "choice" to be made. There is God's Holy Will to fulfill with love and with perfection, made possible by the supernatural helps 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 flow into human hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of all Graces.
Although I have written (and taught) this repeatedly throughout the course of my professional life as a college professor and speaker and writer, let me reiterate this simple truth once again: Every abortion in an attack mystically on the preborn Baby Jesus in the person of an innocent preborn baby in his mother's womb. No one--and I mean no one--can say that he "loves" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and support as a matter of public law and/or participate in actively the act of dismembering or burning or poisoning Him mystically in the persons of innocent preborn children by chemical or surgical means.
It is that simple. There is "common ground" to be found. There is only God's Law to be obeyed. Period.
The late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen explained that we must be intolerant of error and vice:
"America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded... In the face of this broadmindedness, what the world needs is intolerance." ("A Plea for Intolerance," 1931).
Barack Hussein Obama and other pro-abort civic officials, both Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and their conciliar enablers such as "Father" John I. Jenkins won't be able to use hubris to escape from the reality of these words, written by Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930, at the moment of their Particular Judgments if they do not repent of their crimes against God and men and convert to the true Faith before they die, choosing to Baptized, if necessary, which washes away Original Sin and Actual Sins (and all of the temporal punishment due to one's Actual Sins), or to return to the true Faith by making a good, integral auricular Confession of their sins to a true bishop or a true priest and publicly abjuring their former crimes against God and men:
Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)
It was to remind the pro-abortion Obama and his conciliar enabler, "Father" John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., that Catholics from all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide gathered at the University of Notre Dame nearly nine months ago now to defend the truth that no one is a friend of Christ the King or of Mary our Immaculate Queen if he supports a single, solitary abortion under cover of the civil law, no less supports the American slaughter of the preborn as a "civil" right that is protected by the nation's Constitution. Eighty-eight of these individuals were arrested while they were displaying signs or praying the Rosary or carrying images of Our Lady as Obama engaged in the practice of sophistry at Our Lady's campus, aided and abetted, of course, by his ever-present TelePrompTer. These individuals are facing up to a year in jail, and they have received not a word of comfort from "Father" Jenkins, who has refused to show them any mercy at all:
However, there is a group of individuals who have reason not to be completely satisfied by Jenkins’ words about the need for “genuine dialogue": the 88 pro-life individuals who were arrested on campus May 17 while protesting President Obama are still facing up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine on charges of trespassing. While witnesses say pro-Obama protesters were allowed to roam free, the arrested individuals were singled out for displaying any pro-life message - including slogans on the sanctity of life, a large wooden cross, and images of Mary.
Fr. Jenkins has denied pleas from several corners to request that the charges be dropped - a request lawyers say the St. Joseph county prosecutor would likely heed. Fr. Weslin, one of the 88 arrested, called on his fellow priest in June to dialogue over the scandal - a request Jenkins ignored.
Notre Dame law professor emeritus Charles Rice called Jenkins' pursuit of token pro-life initiatives a "mockery" while he allowed the protesters to continue facing charges. (Notre Dame president: I'd invite Obama again.)
No mercy from "Father" Jenkins. No recognition from this presbyter that the simple, ordinary, good Catholics who traveled at their own expense from far and wide to defend the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law were simply doing their Catholic duty, and that he, "Father" Jenkins, did a great injustice to them by seeing to it that they were arrested and by refusing thus far to rectify his error and seek mercy from the legal system for their discharging their duties as Catholics to admonish the sinner and to instruct the ignorant.
Here, once again, is part of an open letter written by Notre Dame Law School Professor Emeritus Dr. Charles E. Rice to "Father" John I. Jenkins:
Those 88 defendants were on the other side of the campus, far removed from the site of the Commencement. They are subjected by Notre Dame to the criminal process because they came, as individuals, to Notre Dame to pray, peacefully and non-obstructively, on this ordinarily open campus, in petition and reparation, as a response to what they rightly saw as a facilitation by Notre Dame of various objectively evil policies and programs of Notre Dame’s honoree, President Obama. Those persons, whom Notre Dame has subjected to legal process as criminals, are neither statistics nor abstractions. Let me tell you about a few of them.
Fr. Norman Weslin, O.S., 79 years old and in very poor health, was handcuffed by Notre Dame Security Police as he sang “Immaculate Mary” on the campus sidewalk near the entrance. He asked them, “Why would you arrest a Catholic priest for trying to stop the killing of a baby?” The NDSP officers put him on a pallet and dragged him away to jail. St. Joseph County Police were also there. I urge you to watch the readily available videos of Fr. Weslin’s arrest. If you do, I will be surprised and disappointed if you are not personally and deeply ashamed.
Such treatment of such a priest may be the lowest point in the entire history of Notre Dame. You would profit from knowing Fr. Weslin. Notre Dame should give Fr. Weslin the Laetare Medal rather than throw him in jail. Norman Weslin, born to poor Finnish immigrants in upper Michigan, finished high school at age 17 and joined the Army. He converted from the Lutheran to the Catholic faith and married shortly after earning his commission. He became a paratrooper and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the 82nd Airborne Division, obtaining his college degree enroute. After a distinguished career, he retired in 1968. As the legalization of abortion intensified, he and his wife, Mary Lou, became active pro-lifers in Colorado. In 1980, Mary Lou was killed by a drunk driver. Norman personally forgave the young driver. Norman Weslin was later ordained as a Catholic priest, worked with Mother Teresa in New York and devoted himself to the rescue of unborn children through nonviolent, prayerful direct action at abortuaries. In 1990 at Christmastime, I was privileged to defend Fr. Weslin and his Lambs of Christ when they were arrested at the abortuary in South Bend. One does not have to agree with the tactic of direct, non-violent action at abortuaries to have the utmost admiration, as I have, for Fr. Weslin and his associates. At Notre Dame, Fr. Weslin engaged in no obstruction or disruption. He merely sought to pray for the unborn on the ordinarily open campus of a professedly Catholic university. The theme of Notre Dame’s honoring of Obama was “dialogue.” It would have been better for you and the complicit Fellows and Trustees to dialogue with Fr. Weslin rather than lock him up as a criminal. You all could have learned something from him. His actions in defense of innocent life and the Faith have been and are heroic. Notre Dame’s treatment of Fr. Weslin is a despicable disgrace, the responsibility for which falls directly and personally upon yourself as the President of Notre Dame.
The other “criminals” stigmatized by Notre Dame include many whom this university should honor rather than oppress. One is Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, who has become pro-life and a Catholic actively trying to spread the word about abortion. Those “criminals” include retired professors, retired military officers, mothers of many children, a Catholic nun in full habit, Christian pastors, several Ph.Ds, and Notre Dame grads. They are, in summary, “the salt of the earth.” They came, on their own, at their own expense, and not as part of any “conspiracy,” from 18 states. They came because they love what Notre Dame claims to represent. They themselves do represent it. But one has to doubt whether Notre Dame does so anymore.
Clearly, Notre Dame should do all it can to obtain the dismissal of those criminal charges. This has nothing to do with one’s opinion of the tactics of rescue at abortuaries. It is simply a matter of you, as President, doing the manifestly right thing.
Please permit me to speak bluntly about your announced purpose to participate in the March for Life and to “invite other members of the Notre Dame Family to join me.” Notre Dame should have had an official presence at every March for Life since 1973. But until now it never has. Notre Dame students, with the encouragement of Campus Ministry, participate in the March but the University, as such, has not done so. To put it candidly, it would be a mockery for you to present yourself now at the March, even at the invitation of Notre Dame students, as a pro-life advocate while, in practical effect, you continue to be the jailer, as common criminals, of those persons who were authentic pro-life witnesses at Notre Dame. When the picture of Fr. Weslin’s humiliation and arrest by your campus police was flashed around the world it did an incalculable damage to Notre Dame that can be partially undone only by your public and insistent request, as President of Notre Dame, that the charges be dropped. In my opinion your attachment to the March for Life, including your offering of a Mass for Life, could give scandal in the absence, at least, of such an insistent request to dismiss those charges. Your decision to present an official Notre Dame presence at the March could be beneficial, but not in the context of an unrelenting criminalization by Notre Dame of sincere and peaceful friends of Notre Dame whose offense was their desire to pray, on the campus, for the University and all concerned including yourself. If you appear at the March as the continuing criminalizer of those pro-life witnesses, you predictably will earn not approbation but scorn—a scorn which will surely be directed toward Notre Dame as well. As long as you pursue the criminalization of those pro-life witnesses, your newest pro-life statements will be regarded reasonably as a cosmetic covering of the institutional anatomy in the wake of the continuing backlash arising from your conferral of Notre Dame’s highest honor on the most relentlessly pro-abortion public official in the world. (Open letter from Dr. Charles Rice to Notre Dame President.)
It is always time to remind the likes of "Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., of these basic truths that have been revealed by God and/or exist in the nature of things that are never subject to "negotiation" or "dialogue:"
Condemning a pro-abort's support for the one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, willful murder, under cover of civil law is not a judgment rendered by a fellow human being about the subjective state of the pro-abort's immoral soul, which is something known to God alone. Pro-aborts must using emotion and demagoguery to defend themselves as they defend the right of the civil law to promote the mystical dismemberment of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs.
Innocent human life is inviolable from the first moment of conception through all subsequent stages until natural death.
No human being may undertake any action that has as its sole and immediate end the death of an innocent human being.
The truths of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted to the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication bind the consciences of all human beings in all places at all times in all circumstances until the end of the world.
The fact that a human being rejects these truths does not make these truths any the less valid or eternally binding. Would the law of gravity be invalidated merely because large numbers of people disbelieved in its binding force or validity?
Catholics are Baptized and Confirmed to bear a visible, tangible witness to the truths of the Holy Faith. They are called to run the risk of ostracism and ridicule and even martyrdom, no less electoral rejection, of all things, to remain faithful to each of the truths of the Holy Faith without one iota of dissent.
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ really, really meant it when He uttered the following words:
"And fear not them that kill the body, and cannot kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body as well." (Mt. 10:28)
"Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father, who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father, who is in heaven. . . . He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it." (Mt. 10:32-33; 39)
"If the world hates you, know ye that it hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word, that I said to you: the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also." (Jn. 25:19-20)
"Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, entreat, rebuke with all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and will turn away indeed their hearing from the truth but will be turned to fables." (2 Tim. 4:2-4
No can say that he "loves" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ while he promotes under cover of law the very thing that caused Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death, sin, and that caused Our Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be pierced through and through with Seven Swords of Sorrow.
While it is one thing to sin and to be sorry as we seek out the ineffable Mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance at the hands of a sacerdos acting in persona Christi, it is quite another to persist in sin unrepentantly, worse yet to promote sin under cover of law and to protect it in every aspect of popular culture.
Sin and sinful behavior are not the proximate causes of social disorder. It is impossible to build or to maintain social order on the rotten foundation of civil laws that reaffirm people in lives of unrepentant sin and/or encourage people to commit sins.
These words, written by Silvio Cardinal Antoniano over 450 years ago, are just as relevant today as they were then:
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.
The civil state thus has an obligation to help to foster conditions wherein its citizens will be better able to sanctify and save their souls as members of the Catholic Church. Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.
Let conciliar enablers such as "Father" John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. deny these truths or "finesse" them as "matters of opinion" about which we can "disagree" legitimately. They will find out when they die that these truths bound their consciences and that they had an obligation while alive to defend them to the point of their own deaths for the honor and glory of God and for the eternal and temporal good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.
Alas, part of the reason that men such as "Father" John Jenkins do not speak in such clear terms is because because the counterfeit church of conciliarism to which they belong has made its "reconciliation" with the principles of 1787 and 1789, endorsing the diabolical thesis of the "separation of Church and State" and viewing the hideous lie of "pluralism," which is an outgrowth of the Judeo-Masonic naturalism of Americanism, as the "norm" which requires Catholics to be content in speaking in inter-denominational or non-denominational terms rather than as Catholics.
The "reconciliation" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism with the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles of the modern civil state was anticipated by Pope Leo XIII in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, and condemned in the most direct terms imaginable:
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.)
Obviously, the fact that we have such evils as chemical and surgical baby-killing under cover of law is the result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry. We are not "resolving" these evils naturalistically or politically or constitutionally by means of inter-denominational or non-denominational policies or electoral "strategies." The one and only way to reform the world is to convert men and their nations in it to the true Faith, something that Pope Saint Pius X noted in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
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 conciliar enablers of Catholics in public life of the agencies of organized naturalism in the United States of America (the Republican and Democrat parties) have been appointed and maintained in power by Giovanni Montini/Paul VI, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (see And Yet They Remain in Power). Even those conciliar "bishops" who denounce Catholics in public life who support abortion and contraception and perversity are steeped in the apostasies of conciliarism and offend God every day by their offering of the abomination known as the Novus Ordo service. These "conservative" conciliar "bishops" are thus as incapable of "conservative" Anglican "bishops" of doing anything other than issuing a "tsk, tsk" or a "naughty, naughty" as both of their false religions reject the restoration of Catholicism and the Social Reign of Christ the King as the most urgent task facing them in the civil order.
Pope Pius XI described he fraud of contemporary electoral politics quite well in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:
To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for
what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often
arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives. These political struggles also beget threats
of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of the government.
Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic
Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another.
We must redouble our own efforts in prayer and sacrifice and penance and fasting and mortification to plant the seeds as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for the restoration of Christendom, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit in reparation for our sins and those of the whole world:
Francisco Marto spent long hours in church to console the "good God." So must we:
With his sister Jacinta and his cousin Lucia, he had been blessed with three appearances by an Angel, and six by Our Lady.
At his third appearance, the Angel said to these three young shepherd children: "Console your God". These words impressed Francisco very deeply, and guided his whole life. He wanted to be the "Consoler of Jesus". He felt most hurt when he saw Jesus offended, and his ideal was to give Him consolation. He wanted to avoid sin, and others to avoid it, to save his Saviour sadness. He made very sacrifice he could to give consolation to Jesus. To do this he would stay along for long hours in church, or hide himself in some lonely place. Shortly before he died, he said "In haven I'm going to console Our Lord and Our Lady very much." (Holy Card of Francisco Marto.)
Anyone who thinks that he is "consoling" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ while he remains "neutral" about or supportive of His mystical dismemberment in the persons of innocent preborn children under cover of law is an apostate who has excommunicated himself from the Catholic Church. Such a person is in need of our prayers, to be sure. However, such a person is a proximate source of social chaos, not an instrument of justice founded in the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. And "Father" John I. Jenkins has demonstrated himself to be just as much as an enemy of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Womb by his refusing to take even the simple step of asking that the charges brought against those arrested on the grounds of the University of Notre Dame du Lac nine months ago to be dropped.
Conscious of making reparation for our own sins, which, although forgiven and thus no longer exist, are in need of our making satisfaction here in this passing, mortal vale of tears before we die, may our Rosaries each day help lift the scales from the likes of pro-aborts in public life and their conciliar enablers and hasten their return to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true or lasting social order.
Vivat Christus Rex!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
