Refusing To Champion Christ The King

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Tiring.

Exhausting.

Fatiguing.

Discouraging.

These are just some of the words to describe the weariness felt by having to swat away the mythologies of Americanism that are mouthed repeatedly by the lord "bishops" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. It was just last week that Francis "Cardinal" George, who has used his position as the conciliar "archbishop" of Chicago, make a pilgrimage to a mecca of the false religion known popularly as Mormonism to advance conciliarism's cause of "inter-religious cooperation" on the moral issues of the day without, of course, seeking to make a single convert while there (see Union of Americanists). Yet another conciliar "bishop" Charles H. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap.,  of Denver, Colorado, has added his voice yet again outdone in the advancement of the myths of Americanism, doing so at Houston Baptist University on Monday, March 1, 2010, as he reflected on the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of Address of Senator John F. Kennedy to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960.     

Then Senator Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, put forth the case that the American founding fathers intended for there to be a strict separation of Church and State, which is true insofar as the Federal government of the United States of America is concerned. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, ratified on December 15, 1791, rejected the the establishment of a state religion at the national level. Article VI of the original Constitution proposed on September 17, 1787, by what we call today the Constitutional Convention also forbade any religious test for the holding of office at the Federal level, something that is seen by some as a means to protect Catholics from the sort of legal exclusion that existed in England and in some of the states themselves at the time, but which was, of course, also intended to protect atheists and rationalists and deists and "free thinkers" as well.

"Archbishop" Chaput took issue with the late President Kennedy's strict separationist approach to religion in the "public square," arguing that the founders did not mean to exclude believers from participating as "believers" in issues of public policy, citing as proof that some of the state governments

Early in his remarks, Kennedy said: “I believe in an America where the separation of Church and state is absolute.”  Given the distrust historically shown to Catholics in this country, his words were shrewdly chosen.  The trouble is, the Constitution doesn’t say that.  The Founders and Framers didn’t believe that.  And the history of the United States contradicts that.  Unlike revolutionary leaders in Europe, the American Founders looked quite favorably on religion.  Many were believers themselves.  In fact, one of the main reasons for writing the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – the clause that bars any federally-endorsed Church – was that several of the Constitution’s Framers wanted to protect the publicly funded Protestant Churches they already had in their own states.  John Adams actually preferred a “mild and equitable establishment of religion” and helped draft that into the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution.

America’s Founders encouraged mutual support between religion and government.  Their reasons were practical.  In their view, a republic like the United States needs a virtuous people to survive.  Religious faith, rightly lived, forms virtuous people.  Thus, the modern, drastic sense of the “separation of Church and state” had little force in American consciousness until Justice Hugo Black excavated it from a private letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association.4   Justice Black then used Jefferson’s phrase in the Supreme Court’s Everson v. Board of Education decision in 1947. (http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/3489.)

 

So much Americanism. So much conciliarism. There are more similarities than differences between the views of John Kennedy and "Archbishop" Chaput, whom I had visited in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1991 and saw again briefly in Saint Peter's Square in Rome in 1993 (we also exchanged correspondence on two issues when I was writing for The Wanderer in the 1990s), as the ideas of the American founding, premised in the belief that men could know personal and social order absent a due submission to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication, have splintered just as much as the falsehoods of Protestantism have in the past nearly five hundred years.

First, although some of the founders looked favorably on "religion," false religions are no foundation of personal and social order. The extent to which those in false religions are able to live upright lives is the result of the Actual Grace made present in the world by each valid offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We have seen a sharp decline in the moral behavior of all Americans, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as a direct result of the atrophying of Actual Grace in the world caused by the false sacramental rites of the false church, the counterfeit church of conciliarism, starting with the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo worship service.

Neither Protestantism or naturalism can produce in a sustained manner the virtues that are necessary to please God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church, and it is by so pleasing God that we come to know what truly good citizenship of our country is, something that Pope Leo XIII noted in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899:

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

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

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

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

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

Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order, making it necessary yet again to turn to these words of Pope Saint Pius X, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.

 

A generic attachment to "religion" is of the essence of Judeo-Masonry, not Catholicism. That it is "good enough" for the lords of conciliarism, including Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and "Archbishop" Charles Chaput, makes relevant once again this warning about Masonry and its ethos given us by Pope Leo XIII in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892:

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.)

 

Second, some of the founders who had a generic "attachment to religion" were rationalists who hated and mocked Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Let me reprise once again some of the comments made by John Adams, whose belief in a "mild and equitable equitable establishment of religion" masked a pure hatred for Christ the King, Who has a sacred right to be recognized as the King of all men and all nations:

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away {with} all this artificial scaffolding…" (11 April, 1823, John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, II, 594).

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821)

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, quoted in 200 Years of Disbelief, by James Hauck)

 

No one who has a hatred for Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, especially as He has revealed Himself to exclusively through His Catholic Church, is any kind of friend of the influence of "religion" in the "public square." To cite John Adams as a friend of "religion" is analogous to citing Barack Hussein Obama as a friend of a limited government.

Third, the fact that some states had established religions at the time of the nation's founding proves nothing about the founders' alleged sympathy for "religion" as Protestantism is a false religion inspired by the devil as a revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church. Protestantism is no foundation of personal or social order. It is not a means of personal sanctification and salvation. Its ceremonies are from the devil and are designed to keep people away from the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Fourth, God Himself does not want people bombarded by one false idea and belief after another under the aegis of "religious liberty" or "religious freedom." "Archbishop" Chaput noted in an earlier passage in his address that Protestants had been wary of  "the entanglements of the Roman Church and state power, and papal suspicion of democracy and religious liberty," thus showing himself to believe that the following words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1923, concerning the binding nature of the Social Teaching reiterated by pope after pope in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries was itself erroneous, something that it impossible:

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)

 

For "Archbishop" Chaput, who is only aping the conciliarist embrace of Americanism, a fundamental cornerstone of Modernism, to be correct, then Pope Saint Pius X's clear and concise reiteration of the consistent, immutable teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the obligation of the civil state to recognize the true religion and to accord her, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895 the "favor and protection of the laws:"

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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

 

Yes, "Archbishop" Chaput the civil state has an obligation to recognize the true 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. This is the consistent, immutable teaching of the Catholic Church. So much for the "genius" of the American founding fathers.

A failure on the part of a civil government to recognize the true religion leads to the proliferation of one evil after another. Those who do not recognize that the civil state has a necessity to recognize the true religion and to yield to her magisterial authority in all that pertains to the good of souls will wind up considering themselves "independent" of that magisterial authority or they will wind up attempting to use that civil state's false premises to combat the evils of the day, making them modern day versions of the mythical Sisyphus (see A World of Sisyphuses and It's Still a World of Sisyphuses). This is the inevitable process produced by Americanism, which has played such a key role in shaping the counterfeit church of conciliarism's embrace of "religious liberty" and the "separation of Church and State," both of which have been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church from time immemorial.

The falsehoods of the American founding, you see, must lead to social chaos and disorder. The falsehoods of the American founding must lead to the triumph of statism. The falsehoods of the American founding must wind up convincing Catholics all across the ecclesiastical divide that there is some naturalistic or "inter-denominational" means short of Catholicism to "resolve" problems that have their remote cause in Original Sin and their proximate causes in our own Actual Sins and thus can be ameliorated only by a reform of individual lives in cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. The falsehoods of the American founding must wind up producing a process that is premised upon the necessity of the clash of "competing interests" (see James Madison's The Federalist, Numbers 10 and 51) as the means of "safeguarding" personal liberty.

As I have noted repeatedly, Holy Mother Church can adapt herself to any legitimate form of government. She can and must adapt herself to the concrete circumstances in which she finds herself in the modern world with the "religiously neutral" civil state. The Catholic Church, however, never ceases to proclaim the the Social Reign of Christ the King, never ceases to impart her Social Teaching to her children, never ceases to exhort her children to pray and to work for the conversion of all men and their nations to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there is no true social order.

Was the true Social Teaching of the Catholic Church taught in the United States of America in the Nineteenth Century? Pope Leo XIII reminded the American bishops that it was not, exhorting them to do so in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895:

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

 

Fifth, the "religious liberty" exalted by "Archbishop" Chaput, is in and of itself ruinous to society, something that Pope Pius IX, among others, noted in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864:

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

 

Was Pope Pius IX wrong? If we was, which we know is impossible, so was Pope Pius XII when he wrote about the binding nature of what is contained in papal encyclical letters:

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

 

"Archbishop" Chaput closed his address with the following exhortation:

 

The vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label.  John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” – which is so key to the identity of Houston Baptist University, burns just as hot in this heart, and the heart of every Catholic who truly understands his faith.  Our job is to love God, preach Jesus Christ, serve and defend God’s people, and sanctify the world as his agents.  To do that work, we need to be one.  Not “one” in pious words or good intentions, but really one, perfectly one, in mind and heart and action, as Christ intended.  This is what Jesus meant when he said, “I do not pray for these only, but also those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn17:20-21).

We live in a country that was once – despite its sins and flaws -- deeply shaped by Christian faith.  It can be so again.  But we will do that together, or we won’t do it at all.  We need to remember the words of St. Hilary from so long ago: Unum sunt, qui invicem sunt. “They are one, who are wholly for each other.”  May God grant us the grace to love each other, support each other and live wholly for each other in Jesus Christ – so that we might work together in renewing the nation that has served human freedom so well.

 

To be fair to "Archbishop" Chaput, one could construe his exhortation for Catholics and Baptists "to be in . .in mind and heart and action, as Christ intended" as a plea for them to be converted to the Catholic Faith. In true conciliar fashion, of course, "Archbishop" Chaput is unclear on the matter as his words could also be construed--and reasonably so--by the Baptists as simply a plea for mutual support in the public square.

Be that as it may, "Archbishop" Chaput is very wrong when he said that "the vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label." Everything we do is to be stamped with the mark of Catholicism. Everything. Our true popes have taught us this very clearly without any ambiguity at all:

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

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.)

 

Yes, we have a duty to be Catholic in everything we do at all times.

Pope Saint Pius X, who succeeded Pope Leo XIII on the Throne of Saint Peter on August 4, 1903, explained to us in Notre Charge Apostolique to understand that the one and only source of genuine human liberty is to be found in the Catholic Faith, which is why he exhorted us to restore all things in Christ by planting the seeds for the restoration of the Catholic City:

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

The irony in all of this is that there was really very little that then United States Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy had said in his September 12, 1960, address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association that had not been written by then New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in the May, 1927, issue of Atlantic Monthly in response to a Protestant attorney's questioning him about Pope Pius XI's Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, which instituted the Feast of Christ the King  (see Cut From the Same Cloth). John F. Kennedy really had said little that had not been published under Alfred E. Smith's name thirty-three years before. Efforts of Americanists to defend everything about the American founding as perfectly compatible with the Catholic Faith have been never-ending.

The very proximate reason that we have baby-killing, both chemical and surgical, under cover of the civil law is because of the Protestant revolt against the Social Reign of Christ the King that shaped the heart of Saint Casimir, whose feast day we commemorate today, and all of the great kings of Christendom who ruled according to His Mind as He has discharged It exclusively in the Catholic Church and nowhere else, certainly not at Houston Baptist University.

Want to know true liberty, both personal and civil, which the Catholic Church has always promoted, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Libertas, June 20, 1888? Pray and work for the restoration of Christendom, which starts with the building up of the Kingship of Christ in our own immortal souls.

We must overcome obstacles to Christ's Kingship in our immortal souls, getting ourselves to the daily offering of the Mass of the ages in the catacombs where no concessions are made to conciliarism or to its false shepherds, spending time before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, offering up all of our sufferings and sacrifices and penances and mortifications and humiliations, many though they be be at times (Deo gratias!), to the Most Sacred Heart of Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary our Queen.

The devil hates the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. Consider a secular newspaper account, contained in the Workers' Solidarity publication in Barcelona, Spain, of the jubilation that was felt in the murder of so many bishops and priests during the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939):

The Church must disappear forever. . . . The wretched little Catholic holes no loner exist. The torches of the people have pulverized them. In their place rises a free spirit that has nothing in common with the masochism which incubates in the naves of the cathedrals. But it is necessary to tear up the Church by the roots. For this we must take by force all its goods that rightly belong to the people. Religious orders must be dissolved. Bishops and cardinals must be shot.  (Quoted in Warren H. Carroll, The Last Crusade, Christendom Press, 1996, p. 111.)

The American Revolution and the French Revolution and the Mexican Revolution and the Italian Risorgimento and the Kulturkampf of Otto von Bismarck and the Bolshevik Revolution and the Cuban Revolution and the Chinese Revolution and the Sandinista Revolution have all had one thing in common: a thorough rejection of Christ the King and His true Church as paramount in the lives of men and their societies. The differences are only in degrees and methods. The American Revolution has coopted Catholics subtly over course of time while the others used violence and/or state coercion to silence Catholics. No matter the differences in degrees and methods, the results are the same: a world where men believe that they can order themselves, both individually and socially, without even praying that Our Lord Himself reign over them and their nations as He has revealed Himself to them through His Catholic Church.

Consecrated to Jesus through Mary, we remember these words that Our Lord Himself spoke to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque:

"I will reign in spite of all who oppose Me."  (quoted in: The Right Reverend Emile Bougaud. The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 1990, p. 361.)

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of the Church and Protector of the Faithful, 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.

Saint Casimir, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints