Sad Land of Masonry, Of Thee I Write

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Discussions of Masonic influences on the founding of the United States of America and on her political and cultural life in the past 230 years center all too frequently on specific allegations of who was or was not a member of the Lodge. Those seeking to dismiss the influences of Freemasonry in this country content themselves by saying that "American Freemasonry" is different from "European Freemasonry," going so far as to attempt to convince themselves that Freemasons are nothing more than a sadly misunderstood social organization that have exercised little real influence in the life of this country. Those who dismiss the influence of American Freemasonry are, however, deceiving themselves and others by focusing on the side issues of the quantitative number of Masonic public officials, many though they have been over the past two centuries, rather than addressing the qualitative influence of the spirit of Freemasonry on American public life and popular culture.

The founding of the United States of America was influenced by a variety of complex and inter-related ideas and events. The founding took place 259 years after Father Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the church door in Wittenberg. It took place 242 years after King Henry VIII had himself declared Supreme Head of the Church in England and began his vicious persecutions of Catholics who remained faithful to Rome that resulted in the execution of over 72,000 people between 1534 and the time of this debauched leader's death in 1547. The founding took place 156 years following the landing of the wretched John Calvin's devoted disciples from England at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. The founding took place eighty-eight years following the so-called "Glorious Revolution" and the assertion of Parliamentary Supremacy in England, heralded by John Locke in The Second Treatise on Civil Government. It took place fifty-nine years after the founding of the first Masonic lodge in England. It took place following the arrival on these shores of Quakers and "free-thinkers" and deists and a whole variety of other strange sects. Oh, yes, Catholics were here, interested principally in being able to enjoy the freedom to worship that was denied them in England and Ireland. The thirteen English colonies located up and down the Atlantic seaboard of what is now the United States of America were a hodgepodge of ideas and beliefs, a veritable witches' brew that would degenerate all to logically over the course of time into contemporary pluralism.

Freemasonry found a fertile ground in which to propagate its naturalistic and rationalistic beliefs in the former English colonies. Unlike Europe and Latin America, where the Lodge had to attack the Faith directly and violently because the Cross of the Divine Redeemer had been implanted deeply in the soil in these regions, Freemasonry was able to spread its poisons its this country more insidiously. This was due in large measure to the path that had been cleared for it by Protestantism's multiple heresies and errors.

While some Protestants saw the dangers of Freemasonry and actively opposed the Lodge with great courage and persistence, a land that does not recognize confessionally the true Faith, Catholicism, must surrender to the current that is the most "liberal" and seemingly "tolerant" as time progresses. Freemasonry thus was able to insidiously undermine the life of Catholics in this country, apart from the times when its adherents actively attacked the Church and sought to legislate against her and her interests in one state legislature after another, by propagating the slogans of "universal brotherhood," a respect for "religious liberty" and "freedom of conscience," "tolerance" and pluralism, among many others. A Catholic who is honest with himself can see that the spirit of Masonry is indeed the anti-Incarnational spirit of Modernity, which helped to spawn the movement, Modernism, to accommodate the Church to Masonry's evil spirit. A contemporary way of referring to Modernism is conciliarism.

Freemasonry is founded on the following lies: (1) That a belief in God is irrelevant to the right ordering of civil societies. (2) That the specific content, if anything, any God had revealed to man is a subject of legitimate debate and contention. (3) That such debate and contention was the source of needless conflict and violence among men. (4) That it is possible for men to get along with each other as brothers in society in the pursuit of the common good despite their differences of opinion on matters of religion. (5) That religious faith was best kept private and should receive no expression in civil society. (6) That it is possible for man to be virtuous and to live a good life by virtue of his own unaided powers. (7) That it is possible for man to improve the lot of his own society and to contribute to peace in the world by virtue of his own ingenuity. (8) That the civil state was the product of the consent of those who composed her and that it did not answer to any higher authority.

Here below is an explanation of these particular lies and their ramifications:

(1-4) The conflicts engendered by the Protestant Revolt produced a weariness among European intellectuals and commercial leaders by the end of the Seventeenth Century. Although the intellectual strains that resulted in the rise of Freemasonry had manifested themselves in the Renaissance, especially by virtue of the amorality of Niccolo Machiavelli, the dogmatic disputes among Protestants convinced many influential figures in cultural life that there had to be a secular, religiously indifferentist way to unite men of divergent beliefs into the pursuit of personal virtue and the common good. There is a problem with this lie: the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost changed everything about human history, which is why the Prologue to the Gospel of Saint John is read at the end of the Traditional Latin Mass. Man is not free to act as though the Incarnation did not take place or that it is irrelevant to man in his private life and as a citizen of a particular nation. God has revealed Himself definitively in the Person of the Word made Flesh, entrusting to His true Church the charism to teach that revelation infallibly to all men in all places until the end of time. A failure to accept the Deposit of Faith entrusted by God to His true Church is what leads ultimately to all personal unhappiness (including a great deal of personal insanity) and social disorder. Man comes to believe in the lie that he is self-redemptive and that it really does not make any difference what men believe as long as they are "good" people.

(5-6) The privatization of religious faith is one of the chief goals of Masonry. It has been accomplished to a fault throughout the formerly Christian world. Indeed, the ethos of both Protestantism and Freemasonry convinced many, although certainly not all, bishops and priests in the United States that it was acceptable to go to Mass and to have one's pious devotions but that it was antithetical to social peace to seek to convert the nation to the Social Reign of Christ the King (something that has never been preached in this country). Indeed, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Testem Benevolentiae on January 22, 1899, the Americanist spirit, which is born of both Protestantism and Freemasonry, convinces men that they can be virtuous on their own, thus demonstrating a contempt for the necessity of being in a state of sanctifying grace as the precondition for seeing the Beatific Vision at some point after their death. This spirit has infected the Church worldwide, producing the presuppositions of the so-called ecumenical movement that have sought to denigrate the need to seek converts to the true Faith, something that is detrimental both to individual souls and to entire societies.

(7-8) Man's belief in his self-redemptive abilities individually produces a like attitude in his social relations. Social problems cannot possibly be the result of the sins of men. No, they must be the result of unjust social structures. The god who is man can rectify those unjust structures by the use of his reason, a belief that is at the heart of all secular political ideologies. To legitimize those structures, however, men must have the sanction of a majority of their fellows (or must "sense," to use the Rousseuean example, the "general will" abroad among the people). Thus, governing authority-sovereignty-resides in man, not in Christ the King and His true Church.

The combination of the twin lies of Protestantism, founded in the separation of Church and State (which led to the triumph of the State over the Church) and Freemasonry produces nothing but chaos and social disorder. Although many good people shake their heads when outright lies are told over and over again by certain public figures, the simple truth is this: a culture that is the product of lies founded in the rejection of the necessity of belief in and adherence to Our Lord Jesus Christ in His true Church both in terms of personal behavior and social order manifests the perfection of its inherent degeneracy over time.

The poisons of Freemasonry were spread directly from the United States of America into the regions of Spanish America following the events of 1776 and 1787, paving the way for the founding of Masonic lodges there, all in the name of "freedom," "liberty," "equality," "brotherhood." The spirit of the American and the French Revolutions, although somewhat different in tenor and scope, had one thing in common: men and their civil governments do not have to be subordinate to Our Lord and His true Church in order to pursue virtue individually or to establish and maintain order societally.

Pope Leo XIII wrote directly of the ruinous nature of this belief in Humanum Genus, 1884:

But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.

When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.

Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil. On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.

Freemasonry, which is closely allied with Talmudic Judaism and with the American ethnocentric sect known as Mormonism (whose adherents populate the levers of control of some supposedly "conservative" third party movements and organizations devoted to the propagation of the heresy of Americanist "civil liberty" as the solution to the world's problems), has been able to spread its poisons in these country while Catholics, in particular, have been lulled to sleep by the stupid self-assurance of many of their bishops and priests that the multiplicity of ideas and the freedom to associate to propagate various ideas is a strength rather than a fundamental weakness of the American founding. Indeed, the belief that false religions and ideas have the right to propagandize in civil society is an offense against God, Who is Truth and Who wants nothing but the Truth He has entrusted to His true Church to fill the hearts and minds of men.

Pope Leo XIII put it this way in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from making laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.

The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries saw repeated efforts by Freemasons and their non-Masonic rationalistic, naturalistic allies to attack the Church's teachings so as to undermine their influence in the lives of ordinary Catholics:

Horace Mann was responsible for the creation of the first statewide education department, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, so as to standardize public schooling at the local level in order to make sure that the children of Irish Catholic immigrants were immersed in the ways of Protestantism and American pluralism.

Active persecution of Catholics by Know-Nothings, many of whom were Freemasons, and the Ku Klux Klan, a Masonic organization to the core, in the Nineteenth Century was a fact of life, prompting great heroism from the likes of the first Archbishop of New York, the Most Reverend John Hughes, who fiercely defended the Faith in the midst of these Protestant and Masonic attacks.

Blaine Laws, named after James G. Blaine, a member of the United States House of Representatives from Maine and a two-time Secretary of State who was defeated for the Presidency of the United States by Stephen Grover Cleveland in 1884, were passed in various states to prevent taxpayer monies from being directed to the support of parochial schools.

Jingoistic nationalism sought to enlist Catholic support for the Spanish-American War in 1898, which resulted in the further infiltration of Protestantism and Masonry in the territories of Catholic Spain, taking countless numbers of souls out of the true Church.

The State of Oregon sought to compel the education of children in public schools, a move that was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters.

The State of North Dakota passed anti-garb laws in 1947 to prohibit priests and consecrated religious from wearing their garb in certain public places, aping the Masonic laws that had been instituted by the lodge brothers in Mexico, Our Lady's country.

These Masonic legislative efforts at the state level (so much for states' rights, conservatives; states must be just as subordinate to the Social Reign of Christ the King as national or central or federal governments) had much reinforcement in--and took much of their driving force from the very thought of the some of the leading men of the American founding.

Consider just a few examples of this overt anti-Catholicism:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. ( President John Adams: "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America," 1787-1788)

In other words, you see, all other governments prior to one inaugurated by the Constitution of the United States of America were evil and tyrannical. This is the same sort of ideological, sloganeering propaganda that would be used by the French Revolutionaries and by the Bolsheviks and the Maoists and a wide variety of Masonic revolutionaries in Latin America after the founding of the United States. "History" springs anew with the Constitution of the United States, just as Church "history" springs anew with the Second Vatican Council, eschewing everything that went before it that is said to be associated with the "evils" of Triumphalism. Oh, yes, as I wrote five months ago now, the Potomac does very much flow into the Tiber.

Another example of overt anti-Catholicism can be seen in the writings of then former President Thomas Jefferson in a series of letter that he wrote to Alexander von Humboldt in December of 1813:

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

Many more examples can be given. Suffice it for the moment, however, to illustrate that the very system extolled by Benedict XVI is the one founded on false premises designed to tolerate Catholics so as to coopt them into exchanging any desire to convert the nation to Catholicism for the seductions of social acceptance, political power, material prosperity and sensual pleasures. The pluralist, religiously indifferentist nature of the American founding, so venerated by conciliarists such as Benedict and his cohorts, is the reason that the lion's share of Catholics in this country support one abject evil after another under cover of law and practice it in their own lives on a regular basis. And it is the reason that those Catholics who do oppose evils are unable to understand that their well-intentioned efforts to "influence" the political system will always be akin to Sisyphus attempting to roll that bolder up the mountain.

Catholics must come to understand, once and for all, that nationalism is not patriotism, which wills the good of one's country, which is her Catholicization. The Incarnation has occurred. It matters. It matters in the life of men and of their nations. The Redemptive Act of Our Lord has taken place and is re-presented in an unbloody manner on altars of Sacrifice by the very class of men so derided by Thomas Jefferson and the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, priests. Our Lord has created the Catholic Church to be the sole teacher and mother of men and their nations. This matters. Nothing and no one can take the place of Holy Mother Church.

Alas, once again, the leaders of conciliarism are responsible for further exacerbating the state of the world by jettisoning the authentic patrimony of the Church in favor of an embrace of the novelties of Modernity and Modernism. Thus, there is no one in ecclesiastical authority who will tell former Secretary of Education William Bennett, a Catholic, that the United States of America is not the "last, best hope of the world." There was no one to tell the late President Ronald Wilson Reagan that he was wrong when repeating this phrase over and over and over again. There is no one--and I mean no one--in ecclesiastical authority in the "official" structures of the conciliar church who is willing to state this simple truth simply: The Catholic Church is the one and only hope for mankind." The failure to state this simple truth simply has helped to further institutionalize the influence of the Masonic spirit in every aspect of our national life. Nations need to help to foster those conditions in which their citizens can better sanctify and thus save their souls as Catholics. The leaders of conciliarism do not believe this, placing them in complete union of mind and spirit with the founders of the United States of America.

The antidote, as always, is personal sanctity, founded on the twin pillars of a deep and abiding Eucharistic piety and a Total Consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as her consecrated slaves. We must frequent the Sacred Tribunal of Penance and make reparation for our own sins, which have worsened the state of the Church and the world in many ways, mindful of our need to pray for the conversion of others and our nation to the true Faith. We must forgive our enemies, do good to those who hate us, and bear with those who do not agree with us charitably. We must know the perennial teaching of the Church, resist everything to do with conciliarism, and seek out the glories of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition no matter what this might cost us in human respect.

The final victory belongs to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, something I will never tire of repeating. We must simply keep praying one Rosary after another as we enfold ourselves in the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady so that she might present us to the merciful care of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, now and at the hour of our deaths.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint John Gualbert, pray for us.

Saints Felix and Nabor, pray for us.

Pope Saint Anacletus, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.

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

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

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

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

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

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

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

Response:  Amen.