That's Entertainment

by Thomas A. Droleskey

One of the enduring "contributions" that the ethos of Judeo-Masonry that has flourished so well here in in the United States of America since its very inception are the pernicious errors of freedom of speech and press and religion, each an insidious lie that is enshrined in the First Amendment to its Constitution, which was part of twelve amendments proposed by the First Congress and ratified on December 15, 1791. As noted in yesterday's commentary, Fascists for Freedom the Catholic Church has condemned most consistently these pernicious errors that are used by the adversary to propagate theological and philosophical falsehoods and to incite people, both by overt and subtle means to commit and to persist in grave sins that wound their own souls and wind up disordering their nation and the world-at-large.

Yesterday's article quoted Pope Gregory XVI's firm condemnation, contained in Mirari Vos, of the errors of freedom of speech and press and religion. Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, fifty-three years after Pope Gregory's Mirari Vos, reiterated this condemnation in no uncertain terms:

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 the making of 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 false concept of freedom that is of the essence of the Americanist heresy has enabled the ancient enemies of the Faith in the ranks of Talmudic Judaism and Freemasonry to use various technological advancements, most of them morally neutral in and of themselves, in the field of mass communications to captivate audiences for decades by means of seemingly harmless and apparently "inoffensive" naturalist themes of sentimentality or mystery or adventure or fantasy before exploiting the sense of craving for "entertainment" created by their productions to "push the envelope" in the promotion of one abject evil after another. Oh, to be sure, the Jewish motion picture producers in Hollywood sought to "push the envelope" on suggestive themes in silent films in the second and third decades of the Twentieth Century as well as in some of the early "talkies" following the advent of this genre with The Jazz Singer in 1927. These libertines were stopped dead in their tracks, at least for a period of twenty years, by the combined efforts of The Legion of Decency, which received support and encouragement from Pope Pius XI's Vigilianti Cura, June 29, 1936, an encyclical letter that has been oft-quoted on this website in articles dealing with matters pertaining to the popular culture.

As a matter of simple review, however, especially since I am aware that a new reader or two "happens" along the site now and again and might not be familiar with previous articles (and longtime readers may have forgotten much of the verbiage they had read or in which particular article it was contained), these passages from Pope Pius XI's Vigilianti Cura will serve as a useful reminder of the fact that we are to put our Catholic Faith, which is given to us so that we can please God in this life by cooperating with the graces He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, so that we can save our immortal souls, before succumbing to a desire to be "entertained" on a constant basis, as though "being entertained" was the purpose for which we were created, which it is not.

To Pope Pius XI's Vigilianti Cura:

Everyone will agree that recreation of body and soul, in the various forms in which this age has made it available, is a necessity to those who are wearied by the business and troubles of life, but it must be consonant with the dignity of man and the innocence of morals, and its object must be to excite and stir leisure hours to amusements which injure the principles of morality, dignity and honour, and which give occasion for sin, especially to the young, are surely running a grave risk of impairing their greatness and prestige.

Among such amusements, it must be clear to all, the cinema is of great importance, for in these times it is available to all men. Nor need one calculate how many millions take part in these entertainments every day; the number of cinema theatres is growing rapidly among almost every nation, whether in an advanced or early state of civilisation, and the cinema has become the common form of amusement and recreation, not only for the rich, but for every rank of society. It would not be possible to find anything with so much influence over the people, both on account of the very nature of the pictures projected on the screen, and because of the popularity of the films and the accompanying circumstances.

The power of the cinema is due to the fact that it speaks through the medium of living images, which are assimilated with delight and without difficulty, even by those who are untrained and uneducated, and who would be incapable or unwilling to make the efforts of induction or deduction necessary in reasoning. For to read, or to listen to another reading aloud demands a certain concentration and mental effort; an effort which in the cinema is replaced by the delight of a continuous stream of living images presented to the eyes. This power is accentuated in those films in which the voice accompanies the action, for the action becomes thereby even more easy to understand, and the plot may be developed with the added attraction of music. The dances and the scenes of so-called "variety" introduced in the intervals enhance the mental excitement and provide fresh stimuli.

These theatres, being like the school of life itself, have a greater influence in inciting men to virtue or vice than abstract reasoning. They must therefore be made to serve the purpose of disseminating the right principles of the Christian conscience, and must divest themselves of everything that could corrupt and impair good morals.

All men know how much harm is done by bad films; they sing the praises of lust and desire, and at the same time provide occasions of sin; they seduce the young from the right path; they present life in a false light; they obscure and weaken the wise counsels of attaining perfection; they destroy pure love, the sanctity of matrimony and the intimate needs of family life. They seek moreover to inculcate prejudiced and false opinions among individuals, classes of society and the different nations and peoples.

On the other hand, if these plays conform to the best standards, they can exert a most healthy influence on the spectators. They not only give pleasure, but urge men on and excite them to noble ends; they teach most useful lessons; further, they can display to a man the heroism and the glories of his own and of other nations; they can show virtue and truth in an attractive and beautiful light; among the classes of society, the nations and the different races they can arouse, or at least foster, mutual understanding and good will; they can embrace the cause of justice; they can call all men to virtue; and finally they can lend useful aid to a new and more equitable ordering and government of human society.

These considerations of Ours assume more importance from the fact that the cinema does not address its messages to individuals, but to gatherings of men, and that in conditions of time and place which are as well suited to directing men's enthusiasms towards good as towards evil; such mass enthusiasms as experience tells us may degenerate into something approaching madness.

The films are exhibited to spectators who are sitting in darkened theatres, and whose mental faculties and spiritual forces are for the most part dormant. We do not have to go far to find these theatres; they are near our houses, our churches and our schools, so that the influence they exercise and the power they wield over our daily life is very great.

Moreover stories and actions are presented, through the cinema, by men and women whose natural gifts are increased by training and embellished by every known art, in a manner which may possibly become an additional source of corruption, especially to the young. To this are added musical accompaniments, expensive settings, extravagant presentations, and novelty in its most varied and exciting form. Wherefore especially the minds of boys and young people are affected and held by the fascination of these plays; so that the cinema exercises its greatest strength and power at the very age at which the sense of honour is implanted and develops, at which the principles of justice and goodness emerge from the mind, at which the notions of duty and all the best principles of perfection make their appearance.

But alas! this power, in the present state of affairs, is too often used for harm. Wherefore when we consider the ruin caused among youths and children, whose innocence and chastity is endangered in these theatres, We remember that severe word spoken against the corrupters of youth by Jesus Christ: "But who so shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matth. xviii. 6-7).

It is therefore most necessary, in these times of ours, that these entertainments should not become schools of corruption, but that they should rather assist in the right education of man and in raising the dignity of morality.

It is worth considering, and We do so with the greatest pleasure, that certain Governors, concerned to the great effect exercised by this art on human morals, have instituted select committees of mothers and fathers of families, to inspect, censor and direct the published films. And We know the efforts they have often made to inspire the production of films based on the works of the best authors and poets of their own and of other nations.

Now as it is right and proper for you, Venerable Brethren, to keep a strict and attentive watch over the cinema industry of your nation, which has been productive of so much good, and which has had no little influence on other peoples, so it is the duty of the Bishops of the whole Catholic world to watch over this common and most powerful form of amusement and construction. They must use the injury done to the moral and religious conscience and to the principles of Christian doctrine as a motive for prohibiting immoral films, leaving nothing

undone, but striving with all the means in their power to ward off things which tend to injure and destroy their people's sense of decency and honour.

This duty does not bind the Bishops alone, but all Catholics and all men of good will who have at heart the honour and innocence of family life, of each man's native land, and of the whole human community.

Let us now consider and expound what means of vigilance should be adopted.

The business of the production of cinema films which conform to good morals would be at once concluded if it were possible to produce pictures in accordance with Christian principles. Wherefore we shall always continue to praise those who have in the past, or who will in the future devote themselves to this art, with the intention of producing films designed to promote healthy education and Christian principles-and that not in dilettante fashion, but with all the technical skill of their profession, lest they expend their energies and money in vain.

But since We have considered how many and how great are the difficulties, especially in the economic field, of organising this industry, and since it is of the first necessity that no published films should be such as to offer harm to religion, morals or society, the Bishops must exercise their vigilance on all films which are offered to Christian peoples from any and every source.

We therefore give Our solemn admonition to all the Bishops of the Catholic world, in whose nations cinema films are produced, and to you above all, Venerable Brethren, to bring your fatherly influence to bear on the faithful in Christ who take any part in the industry of this art. Let them seriously consider their private duty, and the obligation by which they are bound as sons of the Church, to strive with all their strength that the pictures which they produce, or in the production of which they assist, shall be in conformity with the best principles and with right standards. There are surely many Catholics among the executives, directors, authors and actors who take part in this business; it is much to be regretted that their actions do not always conform to their faith and their principles. Wherefore it is the duty of the Bishops to admonish such people to make their profession accord with the conscience of good men and followers of Jesus Christ.

In this field of the apostolate, as in all others, the Bishops will undoubtedly find their most willing fellow-workers among the ranks of Catholic Action, whom by this Encyclical We again and again urge to bring all their zealous and unflagging enthusiasm to bear in this matter.

 

To their credit, the bishops of the United States of America, although not recognizing or admitting that the corruption extant in motion pictures was the direct result of the errors contained in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, took the lead in attacking the then increasingly risque themes being explored in some motion pictures. Even Laurel and Hardy films were not exempt from double-entendres (Beau Hunks, 1930, is a good example of how double-entendres were used in the Laurel and Hardy films). Cincinnati Archbishop John T. McNicholas, who presided over the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for a quarter of a century, from 1925 to 1950, started the Legion of Decency in 1933, three years before Pope Pius XI's Vigilianti Cura, after hearing a plea from the longtime (1933 to 1958l) Apostolic Delegate to the United States of America, Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, who told a Catholic Charities convention that the American bishops had to avoid a "massacre of innocence of youth." Archbishop McNicholas composed a pledge for the Legion of Decency in 1933, revising it a year later. The pledge, which is renewed every December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Saint Gertrude the Great Church in West Chester, Ohio, some twenty miles north of Cincinnati, reads as follows:

I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.

 

This truly Catholic pledge, as opposed to the one discussed in yesterday's article, summarizes what should be the approach of each Catholic, no matter where he might fall along the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divides at the present time, around the world concerning the popular culture. Although we should indeed protest and warn our friends and neighbors about particularly insidious, such as the forthcoming The Golden Compass motion picture, the plain fact of the matter is that the Talmudic producers of motion pictures have been emboldened by the collapse of the Legion of Decency and by the approval given to most, although not all, of their works by the National Catholic Office for Motion pictures, created in 1966, and its successor organization, created in 2001, United States Conference of Conciliar Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting, which has, most unsurprisingly, endorsed The Golden Compass, which is an attack against the Catholic Faith, although insidiously subtle (I mean, how many denominations have a "magisterium"?), as an A-II motion picture, one suitable for adults and adolescents.

Such an endorsement is a collateral proof of the corruption of the Faith wrought by conciliarism. Archbishop McNicholas's Legion of Decency would never have endorsed any motion picture containing an attack upon the Faith that was an attempt to put a professed atheist's book into motion picture form. The website of The Golden Compass includes a questionnaire for children to find out the name of their personal demon! There is no anti-Catholic agenda here, no effort to corrupt the souls of the young, no desire to "hook" people with the first in what will be a trilogy of motion pictures designed to promote atheism and to seek to discredit the one, true Faith? Who is kidding whom? Certainly the conciliar "bishops" have lived down to all of the sorry expectations that knowledgeable Catholics have about their seemingly endless capacity to endorse or to soft-peddle abject evils while attacking those who maintain the fullness of Faith without making any concessions to their false religion or to their own nonexistent "legitimacy" as Successors of the Apostles.

What is particularly sad, however, is that Americanism has such a hold on Catholics across the ecclesiastical divides that even some priests in sedevacantist chapels prove themselves to be as clueless as their pretender counterparts in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. One such priest, I was informed recently, told his parishioners a a few years ago that it was acceptable to go see the Harry Potter motion pictures as they were "just entertainment." Just entertainment? Would Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ pollute His holy eyes and His holy ears with the images and sounds of the occult that violate the First Commandment and serve the interests of none other than the adversary himself? Harry Potter? Just entertainment. What a shallow, irresponsible dereliction of priestly duty to the good of the salvation of souls and to the establishment of the Social Reign of Christ the King in homes and in parishes, to say nothing of the entire country and the world. To view images that are from Hell is to place oneself on the path to Hell. End of discussion. Period. Finis.

This priest, who is himself a victim of the Americanist ethos without realizing it, would blanche if someone pointed out to him that Our Lady did not tell Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety years ago that they should go out and "entertain" themselves. She told them, and us through them, to do penance for their own sins and those of the whole world. She told the three shepherd children to pray and to make sacrifices for the conversion of poor sinners. She told them to pray many Rosaries. She told Jacinta Marto while she was hospitalized shortly before her death that many styles and fashions would be introduced that would lead many souls in to Hell. Those styles and fashions are popularized in motion pictures today, are they not? What in the world is an alter Christus thinking when he dismisses a Harry Potter motion picture as "entertainment" for his parishioners to enjoy without considering for a moment the film's vile images and its demonic messages? It would appear, my friends, that some people, yes, even in the Catholic catacombs, are so afraid of what others "think" of them that they are willing to suspend their sensus Catholics in order not to be thought of as belonging to a cult for refusing to do what "others" do so uncritically and reflexively every single day. Our Lady has never told any authentic, aproved seer that we had to "entertain" ourselves to get home to Heaven, has she?

Our souls are made to behold the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven in the company of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph and all of the angels and the saints, including the great saint we celebrate today, Saint Nicholas, that fierce foe of Arianism who slapped the heretic in the face at the Council of Nicea (it was shortly thereafter that Arius's stomach exploded, causing his instantaneous death). Why would we want to pay money to have our souls polluted by images and sounds that are from Hell, produced by the ancient enemies of the Faith who want to do everything within their considerable power to destroy anything that is beautiful and true as they knew that everything that is beautiful and true comes from the true God Who founded and sustains the Catholic Church. This is why such great pains are taken by producers and screenwriters to include blasphemous phrases and scandalous scenes in their productions, taking joy in the blaspheming of the Holy Name of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and in spitting on the sinlessness of His Most Immaculate Mother.

We do not need to "entertained" by spending our disposable income on fare produced by the enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Holy Church. The pledge of the Legion of Decency included a promise to stay away from places of amusement that display motion pictures offensive to Faith and morals. Well, please tell me what motion picture theater doesn't display such motion pictures today? The conclusion is clear: we should consider it our moral duty to stay away from all motion picture theaters (as well as Broadway plays and certain operas) where sins of various kinds, starting with offenses against the First and Second Commandments, and the vilest, most explicit enticements to commit sins are portrayed with exuberant glee. Most Catholics took the Pledge of Decency very seriously from the 1930s until the 1950s. Jolly old Angelo Roncalli "threw open" the "windows" of his false church to "the world," one of the three means by which souls are led to Hell (the flesh and the devil being the other two) in 1958. Behold the rotten results.

You can live without going to motion pictures. You can live without television. Although I was never one for going to see motion pictures in theaters (I've always been too much of a homebody for that), boy, I sure did waste a good deal of the first twenty-five years of my life watching television, which was, as I have noted in many other commentaries, inoffensive in the 1950s but not harmless as it communicated a message of religious indifferentism and semi-Pelagianism (that we can solve all of our problems on our own without the helps provided by Sanctifying Grace) and as it helped to destroy family life, especially family prayer life and the regularity of sleep, accustoming people to passivity and to scheduling their entire lives around its programming. I gave up television, which I watched for news and the Mets, nearly five years ago now. So can you.

The saints got to Heaven without being "entertained" all of the time. So can you. We have a duty in this era of licentiousness to withdraw as much as possible from the popular culture and to create an atmosphere of Catholic joy in our homes found by living the Faith with love and enthusiasm (a word whose originally meaning has been lost on most people: filled with God!). We do not need to "do" what those around us are doing. Most people around us are like lemmings following the modern-day pied pipers of Judeo-Masonry into the fires of Hell, a place whose sights and sounds abound in motion pictures, television programming, magazines, so-called "music," Broadway plays and in sports stadia, where scantily-clad "cheerleaders" are displayed and where the gross images from those morally objectionable motion pictures are shown on gigantic television screens as part of commercial tie-ins that reap millions for the professional sports leagues. Why have anything to do with all of this? Why contribute with your satellite or cable television subscriptions? Why waste your time? And, once again, this is coming from a man who wasted close to half of his life on television. I have much to make reparation for, please, believe me.

We must not be like the rest of men. No, we are not better than anyone else. By virtue of our Baptism as members of the Catholic Church and by virtue of our Confirmation as soldiers in the Army of Christ, however, we have an obligation to guard our eyes and ears and to seek first the things of Heaven, wanting only to please God as He has revealed Himself to men exclusively through the true Church, the Catholic Church, that He Himself founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Our Lord gives us joys even as we are asked to carry the Cross in our lives. It is a joy to be a Catholic, to know that each moment of our lives can be used for the good of our own souls and those of others if we offer up our prayers and penances and fasting and mortifications and almsgiving and humiliations to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the totally consecrated slaves of Jesus through Mary Immaculate. It is nothing other than a joy to be able to suffer with Our Lord and Our Lady and to try to make reparation in some small way for our sins and those of the whole world.

Those who developed the habit of going to motion pictures without thinking about how they are offending Our Lord, harming their own souls and quite possibly scandalizing others ought to break themselves of this habit immediately, especially in this season of Advent. It is no accident, for example, that The Golden Compass is going to be released tomorrow, December 7, the Vigil of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a day of fast and abstinence (and thus a day of particular withdrawal from the pleasures of the world and from all feasting and celebrations). The adversary knows the true liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church even if the producers are only dimly aware of it. He inspires these producers and distributors to release especially egregious motion pictures on Good Friday or a feast day of Our Lady. The movie that promoted cross-dressing, Tootsie, opened on December 17, 1982, the day that the "O Antiphons" begin to be recited in the Church's Divine Office. Anyone who wants to ignore the evils of Hollywood and the agenda of Christophobic, anti-Catholic, sin-promoting producers from Hell is choosing to be in league with these naturalist enemies of Our Lord simply because they want, in the shallow and irresponsible words of that priest mentioned earlier, want to "be entertained."

We are made, as noted before, to gaze upon the very Beatific Vision of the Most Blessed Trinity, a sight so beautiful to behold that Saint Paul described it thusly:

Howbeit we speak wisdom among the perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, neither of the princes of this world that come to nought; But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him. But to us God hath revealed them, by this Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (1 Cor. 2: 6-10)

 

The hour is late. Evil is on the advance in every aspect, every nook and cranny of our popular culture. Each of us, myself included most especially, has enough to answer for in his own life to be indifferent to the evil that is being promoted with abandon and under cover of American law as an American "right" without contributing to its propagation by means of providing its producers with our financial and temporal (use of our time) patronage. It is one thing to sin and to be sorry, to seek out the words of Absolution of a truly validly ordained priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is quite another to persist in sin unrepentantly, worse yet to promote it under cover of law and in every aspect of our popular culture. It is not to be a Jansenist or a Manichean to hate sin and to understand that we are made to "entertain" ourselves by subjecting our souls to sights and sounds that come from Hell and are meant to lead us there for all eternity. What is considered to be "entertainment" here in this passing, mortal vale of tears might just be one's form of torture for all eternity if he wastes his life seeking to be "entertained."

Trusting in the matchless love of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we be so filled with a desire to please God and to call upon Our Lady's help to do so that we will use our time here on earth, which could end when we least expect it, as befits redeemed creatures who put First Things first, especially by a devotion to daily Mass in the Catholic catacombs and our time spend in Eucharistic adoration and deep devotion to the Mother of God through her Most Holy Rosary, in order that we will be prepared for Last Things and thus make an account of a life that was well-spent, to use the phrase of Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, in serving God with a pure heart without fixing our eyes or attuning our ears to the sights and sounds of Hell itself.

Viva Cristo Rey!

 

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Saint Peter Lombard, pray for us.

Saint Albert the Great, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury, pray for us.

Saint Anselm, pray for us.

Saint Canute, pray for us.

Saint Clotilde, pray for us.

Saint Brendan the Navigator, pray for us.

Saint Coleman, pray for us.

Saint Maria Goretti, pray for us.

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Ignatius of Antioch, pray for us.

Blessed Father Vincent Pallotti, pray for us.

Saint Josaphat, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Mary Claret, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Blessed Edmund Campion, pray for us.

Saint Saturninus, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori, pray for us.

Venerable Juan Diego, pray for us.

Venerable Junipero Serra, pray for us.

Venerable Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

The Christmas Novena, begun today, the Feast of Saint Andrew (said fifteen times daily until Christmas Day)

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold.  In that hour vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.  

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.