by Thomas A. Droleskey
Long before the "election" of Angelo Roncalli as "John XXIII" on October 28, 1958, and the dawning of the age of conciliarism that has devastated the Faith and given grave offenses to God, the Americanist bishops of the United States of America and their underlings were paving the way for the triumph of the Americanist spirit of "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State" at the "Second" Vatican Council. Some of the early Americanists, such as Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, the founder of the Paulists and one of the chief Americanists of the Nineteenth Century, believed that the "American way" was going to lead to new, universal mode of being for the Church and the world, a belief that was very much reflected in the "Second" Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1964.
Monsignor Henri Delassus documented Hecker's beliefs concerning the "universal" mission of Americanism to "evangelize" the Church, if you will, by quoting one of Hecker's early biographers, Abbot Klein:
American Catholicism" is not, in the thought of is promoters, a way of thinking and of practicing Catholicism solely in the contingent and changing things that would be common to the United States, in accordance with the particular conditions that are found on American soil. If this had been so, we would not have believed it incumbent upon us to be concerned with it.
No, their pretension is to speak to the entire universe: "The ear of the world is open to our thinking, if we know what to say to them," Msgr. [Bishop of Richmond, John] Keane had written to the Congress of Brussels. And in fact they are speaking, and their word has not been without echo upon each part of France. If, at least, they had not put into the ear of the world anything other than what the Church leaves to our free discussion; but, no, as we shall see, we shall come to understand that their words are more or less imposed upon that which belongs to the very fundamentals of the Catholic faith.
The Abbot Klein had said in the preface he gave to The Life of Fr. Hecker: "His [Fr. Hecker's] unique and original work is to have shown the profound harmonies joining the new state of the human spirit to the true Christianity." "The American ideas that he recommended are, he knew, those which GOD wanted all civilized people of our time to be at home with ..."
"The times are solemn," Msgr. Ireland had said, in his discourse, The Church and the Age. "At such an epoch of history ... the desire to know is intense ... The ambition of the spirit, fired up by the marvelous success in every field of human knowledge ... The human heart lets itself go to the strangest ideals ... Something new! Such is the ordered word of humanity, and to renew all things is its firm resolution.
"The moment is opportune for men of talent and character among the children of the Church of God. Today the routine of old times is dead; today the ordinary means lead to the decrepitude of the aged; the crisis demands something new, something extraordinary; and it is upon this condition that the Church shall record the greatest of victories in the greatest of historical ages" (Discourse given in the Cathedral of Baltimore, October 18, 1893, on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Episcopal consecration of Cardinal Gibbons.) (Monsignor Henri Delassus, Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, available from Catholic Action Resource Center, pp. 9-10.)
Although I have written about the heresy of Americanism on many occasions, suffice it to note for present purposes, especially for those readers who have not read articles such as
Babbling Inanities of Americanism, that Americanism is the exaltation of the belief that it is not necessary for the civil state to recognize the true religion and to accord her the favor and the protection of the laws, that it is "good enough" for individual Catholics to have a "voice" in civic affairs without providing a specific role for Holy Mother Church to interpose herself as a last resort with the civil authorities if they propose to do--or have in fact done--things grievously contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and thus contrary to the good of souls. Pope Leo XIII knew that the Americanist spirit sought to accommodate the Faith to the demands of pluralism in such a way that Catholics in the United States of America would come to view the Church through the eyes of the world rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the Holy Faith:
But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state. . . .
For it [an adherence to the condemned precepts of Americanism] would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive of and desire the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899>)
That "different" church in the United States of America did manifest itself over time, especially as American bishops sought to prove their "patriotism" after President Thomas Woodrow Wilson involved the United States of America in the unjust and immoral world known now as World War I in 1917, a war that Wilson believed would provide him with the opportunity export his concept of Americanism into those "backward" countries of Europe that were still under the influence of the Catholic Church that he hated so fiercely. James Cardinal Gibbons, the longtime Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, was more than willing to do the anti-Catholic Wilson's bidding even though Wilson was such an anticlericalist that he referred to the de facto Primate of the United States of America as "Mister Gibbons" and even though Wilson had in 1916 told Gibbons' personal representative, Father Clement Kelley, the following about the slaughter of Catholics in Mexico by the Masonic revolutionaries there:
"Wilson replied [to a Father, later Bishop, Clement Kelley, who was a representative of James Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, for whom Wilson had such contempt that he addressed him as Mister Gibbons]: 'I have no doubt but that the terrible things you mention have happened during the Mexican revolution. But terrible things happened also during the French revolution, perhaps more terrible things than have happened in Mexico. Nevertheless, out of that French revolution came the liberal ideas that have dominated in so many countries, including our own. I hope that out of the bloodletting in Mexico some such good yet may come.'
"Having instructor his visitor as to the benefits which must perforce accrue to mankind out of the systematic robbery, murder, torture and rape of people holding a proscribed religious conviction, the professor of politics [Wilson] suggested that Father Kelley visit Secretary of State Williams Jennings Bryan, who expressed his deepest sympathy. Obviously, the Wilson administration was committed to supporting the revolutionaries (Robert Leckie, American and Catholic, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1970, p. 274.)
An entire appartus, the National Catholic War Council, which became the National Catholic Welfare Conference in 1919 and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference in 1966 and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2001, was created by the American bishops in 1917 to support the Wilson's war to "make the world safe for the democracy," which Woodrow Wilson believed was the "true religion" that could provide a "framework of peace" for the future. This apparatus grew in size over time, serving as a major supporter of the leftist policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that were in direct contravention of Pope Pius XI's call in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, to respect the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity (that those institutions, starting with the family, closest to those in need should supply for their wants). The bureaucracy of the American bishops became so filled with unreconstructed leftists and statists by the 1960s that many "conservative" Catholics considered the then named United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to be nothing other than a policy arm of the administration of the social engineer named President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
As I have demonstrated in several other articles, the bureaucrats in the apparatus of the American hierarchy took their strength and inspiration from cardinals and bishops who served as errand boys for the major domos of the Democratic Party. Just consider (yes, once again for longtime readers, perhaps for the first time for newer readers) the examples given by Francis Cardinal Spellman and Richard Cardinal Cushing:
In 1960, the Puerto Rico hierarchy decided to make one last concerted effort to drive the Sangerite forces from the island. The Catholic resistance was lead by two American Bishops--James F. Davis of San Juan and James E. McManus of Ponce. The Catholic Church in Puerto Rico helped to organize a national political party--the Christian Action Party (CAP). The new political front was composed primarily of Catholic laymen and its platform included opposition to existing permissive legislation on birth control and sterilization.
When increasing numbers of CAP flags began to fly from the rooftops of Puerto Rico's Catholic homes, the leaders of the opposition parties, who favored turning Puerto Rico into an international Sangerite playground for massive U.S.-based contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization experimental programs, became increasingly concerned for their own political futures. Then unexpected help arrived in the unlikely person of His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York.
One month before the hotly contested national election, Spellman arrived in Puerto Rico ostensibly to preside over two formal Church functions. While on the island, Spellman agreed to meet with CAP's major political rival, Governor Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and a supporter of federal population control programs for Puerto Rico.
In an interview that followed his meeting with Munoz, Spellman, known for years as FDR's errand boy with a miter, claimed that politics were outside his purview. The cardinal's statement was interpreted by the press as an indictment of the partisan politics of Bishops Davis and McManus. To underscore his message, as soon as Spellman returned to the States he made a public statement in opposition to the latest directives of the Puerto Rico bishops prohibiting Catholics from voting for Munoz and his anti-life PDP cohorts. Catholic voters in Puerto Rico should vote their conscience without the threat of Church penalties, Spellman said.
Boston's Cardinal Cushing, John F. Kennedy's "political godfather," joined Spellman in expressed "feigned horror" at the thought of ecclesiastical authority attempting to dictate political voting. "This has never been a part of our history, and I pray God that it will never be!" said Cushing. Cushing's main concern was not the Puerto Rican people. His main worry was that the flack caused by the Puerto Rican birth control affair might overflow into the upcoming presidential campaign and hurt John Kennedy's bid for the White House.
The national election turned out to be a political disaster for CAP. Munoz and the PDP won by a landslide. Bishop Davis was forced to end the tragic state of confusion among the Catholic laity by declaring just before the election that no penalties would be imposed on those who voted for PDP.
Two years later, with the knowledge and approval of the American hierarchy and the Holy See, the Puerto Rican hierarchy was pressured into singing a secret concordat of "non-interference" in government-sponsored birth control programs--a sop being that the programs would now include instruction in the "rhythm method." While insisting on their right to hold and express legitimate opposition to such programs, the Puerto Rican bishops promised they would "never impose their own moral doctrines upon individuals who do not accept the Catholic teaching."
When the Sangerite storm hit the mainland in the late 1960s, AmChurch would echo this same theme song, opening the floodgates to a multi-billion dollar federal-life-prevention (and destruction) program. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 647-649)
Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. . . . In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, 'An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,' and effectively scuttled the opposition. Cardinal Cushing announced: 'My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position upon those of other faiths'. Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that 'I could not in conscience approve the legislation' that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, 'I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others.' So there it was: the 'personally opposed' argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to 'impose' his opinion. Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. 'But my thinking has changed on that matter,' he reported, 'for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do'. . . . Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: 'If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church.' Dozens of Catholic legislators did vote for the bill, and the Birth Control law was abolished. Perhaps more important in the long run, the 'personally opposed' politician had his rationale." (Catholic World Report, 2003.)
Recent articles (Signs of Apostasy Abound and Randy Engel on Catholic Relief Services) on this site have noted the involvement of the "Catholic" Campaign for Human Development and Catholic Relief Services with pro-abortion organizations. This is, of course, but a logical continuation of the rotten heritage of the likes of Francis Spellman, who was known as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's water boy, and Richard Cushing, who was the episcopal spear-carrier for Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., and his ambitious sons. It should not surprise us at all that some of the key staffers in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are, apart from being full-throated supporters of Barack Hussein Obama's administration, fully supportive of groups that are pro-abortion and pro-perversity. This press release from the American Life League, issued just yesterday, February 1, 2010, attests to this truth:
Washington, DC (01 February 2010) – A national group that promotes abortion and homosexual rights has deep ties with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, according to a report released Monday.
Top USCCB executive John Carr held simultaneous leadership roles, creating a conflict of interest, with the USCCB and the radical Center for Community Change.
“The closer we look at the Bishops’ Conference [staff and programs], the more we find a systemic pattern of cooperation with evil,” said Michael Hichborn, American Life League’s lead researcher into the USCCB scandal. “The CCC has lodged itself into the highest places of power in the USCCB while working to promote abortion and homosexuality.”
John Carr is the USCCB executive director of the Department of Justice Peace and Human Development which oversees the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). He has been employed by the USCCB since 1987.
John Carr’s relationship with the Center for Community Change goes back at least to 1983, serving in leadership roles from 1999 to 2006 – including as chairman of the board. The Reform CCHD Now report details the organization’s promotion of abortion, “reproductive rights” and homosexuality as among the CCC’s core advocacy focuses.
In 2001, while Carr served as both a USCCB exec and CCC leader, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference funneled $150,000 to the pro-abortion group. The USCCB web site currently promotes the group and officials have spoken at CCC events.
“Strangely, Carr’s leadership on the CCC’s board shows up on several bios he’s submitted for speaking engagements, but the word for word bio on the USCCB web site mysteriously omits that one detail,” Hichborn said. “Why?”
Revelations of John Carr’s involvement in the Center for Community Change come only months after members of the Reform CCHD Now coalition, including American Life League, uncovered 31 CCHD grantees partnered with the CCC.
“The CCHD claims it will immediately investigate accusations against organizations it funds yet it is silent on the CCC,” said Hichborn. “How can Carr and the USCCB possibly justify this intimate relationship with such an obvious enemy of the Church?”
The Reform CCHD Now coalition is a lay Catholic watchdog group comprised of some of the top Catholic pro-life organizations in the country including American Life League, Human Life International and Bellarmine Veritas Ministry. For a full list of all 15 coalition members see www.reformcchdnow.com. (Conference of Catholic Bishops Exec Chaired Pro-Abortion, LGBT Rights Group.)
Despite what many of his defenders claim are his personal "pro-life" convictions, John Carr's sympathies for an organiation that promotes two of the sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance is not at all atypical for the apparatchiks in the bureaucracy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or at all atypical in many chancery offices that are in the control of the conciliar revolutionaries at this time. This kind of poor judgment means nothing to most of the American 'bishops" and it means nothing to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who has said nothing at all in the two hundred ninety seven (297) days since "Archbishop" Robert Zollitsch denied that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died in atonement for our sins on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. John Carr will be able to maintain his "good standing" in the conciliar structures just as much as Robert Zollitsch has done despite his personal involvement with groups that promote grave evils under cover of the civil law. Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict himself is thought of many "conservative" and traditionally-minded Catholics as a "restorer" of the Faith even though he has said that Christians and Jews "pray to the same Lord" and that we should have a renewed "respect" for a Jewish interpretation of the Bible.
Remember, Edward Moore Kennedy died in "good standing" in the conciliar structures on August 25, 2009. So did the the notorious dissenter, Father Edward Schillebeeckx, who was permitted to remain in "good standing" until his death at the age of ninety-five on December 29, 2009. To get sanctioned by the officials of the counterfeit church of concilairism one must do something really egregious, such as put into question the nature and extent of the crimes of the Third Reich or to deny the legitimacy of the "Second" Vatican Council and/or the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes," worse yet to utter a word of criticism about the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. Defecting from the Faith is not an impediment to serving as a "pope" or a "bishop" or a presbyter or a bureaucrat in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
This is, of course, a chastisement for the years of infidelity that led up to the "Second" Vatican Council and the tidal waves of apostasy and blasphemy and sacrilege that have followed thereafter.
We are called to be a sign of contradiction in the midst of this apostasy and blasphemy and sacrilege in order to help make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world by offering up with joy and gratitude whatever it is we are called to suffer--whether physical pain or the assassination of our characters or our being rejection by family members, friends, former associates--by offering it all up to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our sins caused that Immaculate Heart of Mary to be pierced through and through with the Seven Swords of Sorrow, the first of which occurred when the aged Simeon made his prophecy on this very day, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We do not know just how much we need to suffer in order to make reparation for our sins, each of which caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and helped to thrust those Seven Swords of Sorrow through and through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The good God gives us lengths of days so that we can indeed make reparation with every stubbed toe and every hurt feeling and every human frustration that we might feel in being misunderstood or calumniated by complete strangers.
It may not have been so long ago, relatively speaking, that some of us, infected by worldliness and a carelessness of speech and action, may have been guilty of violating the Virtue of Modesty in speech or of giving scandal to others by how we dressed or behaved. We may know better now. We may indeed despise our past sins with a deserved revulsion. We still, however, have a need to make reparation for those sins, which is why we should view the time of chastisement in which life, a time in which the Faith is under attack by the lords of Modernity and the lords of Modernism, as a great blessing as God is giving us an opportunity to save our souls by dying to self and by giving Him thanks for being made a fool in the eyes of others. Deo gratias!
As we approach Lent in fifteen days, it is important during this season of Septuagesima to have hearts that are truly contrite. For it is one thing to sin and to be sorry as we seek out the mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is quite another to persist in our sins unrepentantly, worse yet to seek to be reaffirmed or excused in our sins by others (or to reaffirm others in their sins). This is the spirit of Psalm 50, composed by King David, a spirit that we must have with every beat of our hearts, especially as we approach the holy season of Lent:
Unto the end, a psalm of David, When Nathan the prophet came to him after he had sinned with Bethsabee. Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity. Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.
To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee: that thou mayst be justified in thy words and mayst overcome when thou art judged. For behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me. For behold thou hast loved truth: the uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me. Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed: thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. To my hearing thou shalt give joy and gladness: and the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice.
Turn away thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels. Cast me not away from thy face; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit. I will teach the unjust thy ways: and the wicked shall be converted to thee.
Deliver me from blood, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall extol thy justice. O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise. For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted. A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Deal favourably, O Lord, in thy good will with Sion; that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up.
Then shalt thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations and whole burnt offerings: then shall they lay calves upon thy altar. (Psalm 50, 1-21.)
Entrusting all, as always, to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we be ceaseless in our efforts to pray and to work for the restoration of the Church Militant on earth, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit and passing out Green Scapulars and blessed Miraculous Medals to those whom God's Providence places in our paths. These efforts may "cost" us a lot in this passing, mortal vale of tears. The rewards are Heavenly if we persevere to the point of our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace as members of the Catholic Church.
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us now and the hour of our deaths. Amen.
All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint Luke 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 Simeon, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
