The Prince of Peace Need Not Apply

by Thomas A. Droleskey

So much is lost in a world of endless wars fought for a variety of naturalistic reasons have nothing to do with repairing wounds to justice and/or protecting legitimate national security interests that sovereign nations have a Natural Law right to protect by the use of armed force if necessary--and if all of the conditions associated with the Just War Theory have been with as much reasonable certitude as can be ascertained in the always-fallible process of human decision making. The prosecution of war in the anti-Incarnational world of Modernity has become a means by which goals associated with nationalism and various ideological crusades ("to make the world safe for democracy," Communist expansionism, Zionism, Mohammedanism) while arms merchants galore become rich as taxpayers are soaked to pay for one unjust war after another. The financial burden imposed by the endless wars of Modernity will enslave future generations of taxpayers to pay the plans of Masonic social engineers to build the "better world."

Even a thorough-going naturalist and career military officer saw the dangers of what he called the military-industrial complex. President Dwight David Eisenhower, about to leave the office of President of the United States, said the following in a farewell address delivered on January 17, 1961:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

 

Although Eisenhower did not understand that the authentic security of one's nation is premised upon its subordination to the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by the Catholic Church, placing him in concert with today's conciliar officials in the counterfeit conciliar church, the late president and former five star General of the United States Army did have a keen insight into the dangers posed by the rise of what he termed so accurately as the military-industrial complex, which thrives on the constant warfare that George W. Bush and his advisers envision as "necessary" to "secure" this country and "liberate" other peoples. The precepts of the Just War Theory demand that military force be used as a last resort in situations when there is a real and legitimate threat to a nation's security and/or in situations where justice has been so disturbed internationally that the only recourse to defend one's nation and/or to restore justice is military force.

The judgment to use military force, which is supposed to be governed in the United States of America by a declaration of war passed by both Houses of the Congress of the United State, in such situations must take into account many factors, including whether the good end sought will be outweighed by the foreseen evil to be done in the prosecution of military action. Even the best efforts to protect noncombatants from injury and death will fail. Bombs go astray. Noncombatants might be misidentified accidentally as combatants. Soldiers make mistakes in the field of combat. War carries with it terrible consequences, which is why the Catholic Church has taught from time immemorial that every step be taken to assure, as far as is humanly possible in this fallen world, that noncombatants are indemnified and that the damage done to a country's infrastructure and food supply does not create worse conditions that are meant to be redressed by the use of military force.

The chaos wrought by the unjust and immoral invasion of Iraq by the armed forces of the United States of America on March 19, 2003, has taken the lives of over 3,000 American service personnel needlessly and opened up Iraq's borders, which were controlled very tightly by the late dictator Saddam Hussein, to all kinds of Mohammedan terrorists bent on fomenting violence among Iraq's fractious Mohammedan sects and upon American military personnel and civilians based in that country. While the violence has abated significantly in the past few months as a result of a few political agreements and the presence of an additional 30,000 American troops in Iraq in the past year, the situation in Iraq continues to be violent and unstable. Left unreported in most of the "mainstream" media are the continued attacks upon Eastern Rite Catholics (and members of various Orthodox sects) in Iraq since the American invasion in 2003.

As has been noted in other articles on this site, Saddam Hussein was a brutal thug who liquidated political and ethnic opponents at will. He did, however, maintain a sense of order in Iraq, protecting the Christian minority there for a variety of reasons, one of them most admittedly having to do with his own self-interest. The neoconservative geniuses who planned the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the events of September 11, 2001, and by manufacturing "evidence" to "prove" that Hussein was stockpiling "weapons of mass destruction" that he had long before destroyed (or had used on the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1991) believed in their delusions that an American invasion would usher in an American-style pluralist democratic republic. It never dawned on these bright lights, many of whom, shall we say, deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that an American invasion would go bad or that a "liberated" Iraq would make it easier for various Mohammedan sects to wreak violence upon Catholics. The flight of over a quarter of million of Iraqi Catholics from their homeland since the American invasion in 2003 has been one of the most tragic consequences of the neoconservatives' efforts to build a "better world," principally, as they saw it, for the security of the State of Israel, by means of the "enlightenment" provided by a quick war prosecuted with advanced technologies.

Billions of American taxpayer dollars to buy the arms that destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and to fight to the armed resistance against the invasion and occupation while at the same time attempting to put down a civil war among Iraq's Mohammedans. Billions more have been spent rebuilding the infrastructure that was destroyed by "coalition" munitions, a rebuilding effort that has been characterized by sloth and incompetence that have left millions of ordinary Iraqis without basic services (water, electricity, sanitary facilities, housing). American corporations and private contractors, at least one of which was hired to engage in "enhanced interrogation" methods (read: torture), and individual American entrepreneurs with ties to the administration of President George Walker Bush have been the real beneficiaries of all this while almost nothing has been done to alleviate the suffering of the nearly three-quarters of a million Catholics who have stayed in Iraq, to say nothing of the plight of those who left the country to go into exile, forfeiting their homes to Mohammedan mobs eager to be rid of the "infidels" once and for all.

In Pakistan, where Catholics comprise less than one percent of the population, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 has resulted in a situation of great instability and random acts of violence committed by various Mohammedan terrorist groups that were supposed to be suppressed by the ten billion dollars in American aid to Pakistan that have been given since the events of September 11, 2001. The Pakistani government of General Pevrez Musharraf squandered that money on matters unrelated to the "global war on terror." American officials admitted after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Thursday, December 27, 2007, that they had not monitored how Musharraf had used the ten billion dollars of American taxpayer monies that have been sent to him in the past six years.

Monies spent to make Americans "more secure" have gone to undergirding regimes that are as corrupt and only slightly more tyrannical than that of the United States of America, where the exercise of tyranny is masked under the usual fascist guises of "national security," patriotism" and the newer slogan of "the global war of terror." All the while, you see, Catholics in Iraq and Pakistan and elsewhere in the Mohammedan world have been put more at risk and subjected to all manner of persecution without too many words of concern, no less, protest emanating from Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America.

Oh, well, why should there be any protests over the plight of Catholics in the Mohammedan world in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, which is not a "crusade" against Mohammedanism or "Islamo-fascism," by the way. George W. Bush has gone out of his way to call Mohammedanism a "religion of peace." The American invasion ousted a corrupt secular Mohammedan dictator and replaced him with equally corrupt religious Mohammedans who fight with each other as they squander American aid money and do little to stop sectarian violence or to come to a meaningful, enforceable agreement on sharing the nation's oil wealth, oblivious to the suffering of Iraq's Catholic community. Please, the the "global war on terror" is not a "Christian" crusade against Mohammedanism. Far from it. If it were, ladies and gentlemen, there wouldn't be such silence in the wake of the persecution of Catholics in Iraq, now would there?

Alas, Mohammedan violence against Catholics is tolerated by the government of the United States of America because it needs someone in Iraq to fill the power vacuum caused by the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Remember, the government of the United States of America was actually complicit in the slaughter of over a quarter of a million Catholics in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. The government of the United States of American saw to it that Protestant "churches" and Masonic lodges were started in Catholic lands following its victory in the unjust and immoral Spanish-American War, taking untold numbers of souls out of the Church in the name of American "civil" and "religious" liberty. And the government of the United States of America was mostly deaf, dumb and blind to the plight of Maronite Rite Catholics in Iraq in 2006 as the forces of Zionism bombed their homes in Lebanon, displacing nearly a million of them in the process with hardly a word of this moral disaster being reported by the "mainstream" media. The government of the United States of America will only rarely criticize something done by their Zionist puppeteers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. How ironic it is that Mohammedan violence against Catholics must now be tolerated in order to do the bidding of the Zionists in the creation of the "democratic" Iraq!

American lives have been wasted in this effort to build "peace and security" on the basis of war conducted under false premises and designed to pursue illusory objectives. American families have been torn apart for months and years on end as their loved ones, including mothers of children who had signed up to serve in the National Guard (which exists to deal with emergencies of various levels in the fifty states and, as a last resort, in other parts of the nation if pressed into service for that purpose), have served in Iraq or been deprived of their fathers because of long stints in rehabilitation centers following injuries sustained in Iraq. Although figures vary, estimates of the Iraqis killed since 2003 range from 300,000 to 600,000, a third of these having been caused by the invading/occupying forces. The American invasion of Iraq has been nothing other than a moral disaster from beginning to end, especially when one considers the war upon souls that the invaders' government unleashed in 2003 when sending in "family planning" information and pills and devices almost immediately in the aftermath of the invasion itself. Ah, yes, American "liberation." American "civil liberty." Americanism will solve all, right?

No. Catholicism is the foundation of personal and social order. Nothing else.

Compounding this moral disaster is the fact that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes that the solution to conflicts in the Mohammedan world is for Mohammedan states to embrace the conciliar concept of "religious liberty" that is considered to be an "obligation" in an irreversibly "pluralist" world. While there are some secular and religious Mohammedan intellectuals who may agree with such an approach, at least on some level or another, the plain fact of the matter is that efforts to convince Mohammedans to adopt the heretical notion of "religious liberty" will never succeed. Most believing Mohammedans in Mohammedan countries (yes, even in those Mohammedan countries that are more secular than Iran, for example) do not accept pluralism of any kind. Public displays of Christian symbols are forbidden in Saudi Arabia, where the oligarchs who enjoy their oil wealth do not want to offend mullahs who could arouse enough people to rise up and send them off to exile. The spirit of Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae is not coming to a Mohammedan nation anytime soon.

Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict shows himself to be a driven man by the way that he promotes "religious liberty" and "healthy secularity," extolling the pluralism of the United States of America as the "model" for the rest of the world. He has an evangelical zeal for these false concepts. Imagine if he had true apostolic zeal to seek with urgency the conversion of those who are steeped in false religions, including those, such as Talmudic Judaism and Mohammedanism and Hinduism and Buddhism and animism, whose adherents have souls that are steeped in the ravages of Original Sin, inclining them all the more to engage in acts of violence and to hate others rather than to forgive past injuries and to will their good. No, Ratzinger/Benedict must adhere to the iron-laws of conciliarism just as any other revolutionary must cling to his ossified formulas long after their false premises have been exploded and been proven to be harmful for men and their nations. Ratzinger/Benedict must mouth Judeo-Masonic platitudes about "brotherhood" and "solidarity" while refusing repeatedly to explain to non-Catholic leaders who visit him (yes, I know, another non-Catholic leader) that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

Alas, one cannot give what he does not possess. As Joseph Ratzinger does not believe that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order, you see, he is incapable of exhorting others to accept the true Faith. The Prince of Peace need not apply for the rights of absolute exclusivity as the one and only means of personal and social order.

As a true conciliar revolutionary committed to false ecumenism and inter-religious "dialogue," Joseph Ratzinger believes that it is "enough" for Catholics to have a "place" in the marketplace of ideas. A permanent place in the "marketplace" of ideas is not "good enough" for God.

While, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Libertas, June 20, 1888, the Catholic Church will adapt herself to the "marketplace" to make use of it for her own purposes of evangelization, she does so without making any concessions to an inherent human right of those steeped in errors to propagate their false beliefs. She will tolerate false beliefs in those situations where she lacks any authority to suppress them. She never halts her efforts, however, to convert men and their nations to the true Faith. The "marketplace" can be used to the Church's advantage over time. It is not an end in and of itself to which Catholics must accommodate themselves, thereby dismissing the obligation of the civil state to recognize the true Church and accord her the favor and the protection of the laws. The Catholic Church has always insisted that she is the sole means by which human beings can know about God and the sole means by which their souls may be sanctified so as to have dwelling within them the graces won for them by the very Price of Peace Himself and that flow into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother.

As we end calendar year 2007, therefore, a year that has been marked by the surgical assassinations of between 1.1 and 1.5 million babies under cover of law in the "civilized" United States of America, it is useful once again to avail ourselves of these simple but nevertheless profound Catholic truths proclaimed by Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

We have already seen and come to the conclusion that the principal cause of the confusion, restlessness, and dangers which are so prominent a characteristic of false peace is the weakening of the binding force of law and lack of respect for authority, effects which logically follow upon denial of the truth that authority comes from God, the Creator and Universal Law-giver.

The only remedy for such state of affairs is the peace of Christ since the peace of Christ is the peace of God, which could not exist if it did not enjoin respect for law, order, and the rights of authority. In the Holy Scriptures We read: "My children, keep discipline in peace." (Ecclesiasticus xli, 17) "Much peace have they that love the law, O Lord." (Psalms cxviii, 165) "He that feareth the commandment, shall dwell in peace." (Proverbs xiii, 13) Jesus Christ very expressly states: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." (Matt. xxii, 21) He even recognized that Pilate possessed authority from on High (John xiv, 11) as he acknowledged that the scribes and Pharisees who though unworthy sat in the chair of Moses (Matt. xxiii, 2) were not without a like authority. In Joseph and Mary, Jesus respected the natural authority of parents and was subject to them for the greater part of His life. (Luke ii, 51) He also taught, by the voice of His Apostle, the same important doctrine: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God." (Romans xiii, 1; cf. also 1 Peter ii, 13, 18)

If we stop to reflect for a moment that these ideals and doctrines of Jesus Christ, for example, his teachings on the necessity and value of the spiritual life, on the dignity and sanctity of human life, on the duty of obedience, on the divine basis of human government, on the sacramental character of matrimony and by consequence the sanctity of family life -- if we stop to reflect, let Us repeat, that these ideals and doctrines of Christ (which are in fact but a portion of the treasury of truth which He left to mankind) were confided by Him to His Church and to her alone for safekeeping, and that He has promised that His aid will never fail her at any time for she is the infallible teacher of His doctrines in every century and before all nations, there is no one who cannot clearly see what a singularly important role the Catholic Church is able to play, and is even called upon to assume, in providing a remedy for the ills which afflict the world today and in leading mankind toward a universal peace.

Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.

Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)

Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.

It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.

It is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned after the authority of God, the Father, from Whom, as a matter of fact, it originates and after which even it is named. (Ephesians iii, 15) The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth, and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy Family. Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble all who live up to its demands. Christ reigns where the position in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized, for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain, must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense that she should abstract in the least from their authority, each in its own sphere supreme, but that she should really perfect their authority, just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain promoters of their happiness here below.

It is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ -- "the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ." It is no less unquestionable that, in doing all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom, we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace.

 

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself has sent us His own Most Blessed Mother to teach us that the path to world peace runs through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. She explained this Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety years ago from this very year that is about to come to its end. We must do all we can to fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message in our own lives, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit and by observing the conditions of the Five First Saturday devotions. We may not see the fruit of all this with our own eyes. We must, however, continue to remain steadfast in our fidelity to the true Faith in the Catholic catacombs without making any concessions to conciliarism or its wolves that masquerade as shepherds.

Peace in  the world is the result of individual souls being at peace with God by having His own inner life dwelling within our souls by means of Sanctifying Grace. The price of the purchase of that grace was the shedding of every single drop of the Divine Redeemer's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and the Seven Swords of Sorrow that were thrust through and through the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother. All men need to do is seek out this grace with a spirit of true contrition for their sins and a firm purpose of amendment of their lives as they give acts of thanksgiving to the Blessed Trinity for the great gift of the true Faith that makes it possible for them to scale the heights of sanctity and to live in true peace, that of eternity, with all others, forgiving injuries right readily and seeking justice when it is necessary to do so without malice and in a spirit of perfect equity and proportionality.

Let us continue to use the path to personal and world peace that is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, out of which her Divine Son's Most Sacred Heart was formed, a Sacred Heart from which we are called to drink fountains of Divine mercy as we seek to view all people and all things and all events at all times and in all of the circumstances of our lives through the eyes of the true Faith, the only means of human salvation and thus the only means of personal and social order.

 

Viva Cristo Rey!

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 John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Pope Saint Sylvester I, pray for us.

Saint Thomas a Becket, pray for us.

The Holy Innocents, pray for us.

Saint Elizabeth, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Thomas the Apostle, pray for us.

Saint Andrew the Apostle, pray for us.

Saint Barbara, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Chrysologus, pray for us.

Saint Bibiana, pray for us.

Saint Sabbas, pray for us.

Saint Nicholas, pray for us.

Saint Ambrose, pray for us.

Pope Saint Melchiades, pray for us.

Pope Saint Damasus, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Saint Sylvester the Abbot, pray for us.

Saint Gertrude the Great, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Dominic de Guzman, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Peter Nolasco, pray for us.

Saint John Matha, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint John of God, pray for us.

Saint Philip Neri, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Brendan the Navigator, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Peregrine, pray for us.

Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, pray for us.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us.

Saint Peter Canisius, pray for us.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.

Saint Francis Borgia, pray for us.

Saint John Francis Regis, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Casimir, pray for us.

Saint Hedwig, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, King of France, pray for us.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Brigid of Kildare, pray for us.

Saint Patrick, pray for us.

Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us.

Pope Saint Leo the Great, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory VII, pray for us.

Saint Boniface, pray for us.

Saint Meinrad, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us.

Saint Bernardine of Siena, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Saint Joseph Cupertino, pray for us.

Saint Joseph Calasanctius, pray for us.

Saint John Damascene, pray for us.

Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, pray for us.

Saints Isidore the Farmer and Maria de Cappella, pray for us.

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for us.

Pope Saint Damasus I, pray for us.

Saint Jerome, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Louise de Marillac, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Turibius, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.

Saint Polycarp, pray for us.

Blessed Rose Philippine Duchesne, pray for us.

Saint Rita, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Philip Neri, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Peter of Alcantara, pray for us.

Saint Stanislaus, pray for us.

Saint Stanislaus Kostka, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, pray for us.

Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, pray for us.

Saint Adalbert, pray for us.

Saint Norbert, pray for us.

Saint John Chrysostom, pray for us.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria, pray for us.

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, pray for us.

Saints Cosmas and Damian, pray for us.

Saints Gervase and Protase, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Pope Saint Clement I, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saints Fabian Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence the Deacon, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence of Brindisi, pray for us.

Saint Eustachius and Companions, pray for us.

Saints Pontian and Hippolytus, pray for us.

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saints Perpetua and Felicity, pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Saint Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Margaret of Scotland, pray for us.

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 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.