Thirty-five Years of Indifference

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Almost every American alive on November 22, 1963, can remember where he was when he heard the news of then President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination. For those of us in the post-World War II "baby-boom" generation the Kennedy assassination was, even for those of us who were not partisans of the Kennedys or of the Democrat Party, as memorable a moment in national history as December 7, 1941, had been for those who were alive when Japanese Air Force planes, built largely from the scrap metal that the government of the United States of America had sold Japan in 1937, bombed American military facilities and vessels in and around Pearl Harbor near Honolulu in the then Territory of Hawaii. Similarly, the images televised live on September 11, 2001, made a lasting impression upon those who had viewed them as they were being broadcast. Memorable moments, whether national or personal, evoke strong emotions on the part of those who live through them.

Where Were You On January 22, 1973?

Do you remember where you were (if you were alive, that is!) on Monday, January 22, 1973? I remember where I was when I learned of the horrendous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of American in the case of Roe v. Wade.

I was at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, where I had started my graduate studies in political science in the Department of Government and International Relations. My intention at the time was to pursue a joint M.A/J.D. program, entering the Notre Dame Law School, to which I had been accepted, in September of 1973 (I would up completing the master's in a year and then went to the State University of New York at Albany to pursue my doctorate). I heard the news of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe v. Wade while listening to Chicago's WBBM Newsradio 780, making a bee line for the offices of Dr. Charles E. Rice, a Professor of Law at the Notre Dame Law School and the author of The Vanishing Right to Live, a book published by Doubleday in 1968 that had been used by a Dominican priest at Saint John's University in Jamaica, Queens, New York, during a moral philosophy course I took with him in the Spring Semester of 1972. Dr. Rice agreed with my assessment at the time concerning the necessity of working for a no-exceptions amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America to overturn Roe v. Wade and restore full legal protection to the innocent preborn. (My view of things has been deepened a bit, shall we say, in the past thirty-five years.)

Abortion-on-demand did not start with the case of Roe v. Wade, which overturned the laws of thirty-three states that forbade, to one degree or another, the direct, intentional taking of innocent human life in a mother's womb.

It Didn't All Start With Roe v. Wade

No, the move for decriminalized baby-killing by surgical means started in earnest in the early-1960s as a result of the "Thalidomide babies," that is, those babies born with birth defects as a result of their mothers having taken the drug Thalidomide to help them with their morning sickness during pregnancy. It was, as Dr. Doris Graber pointed out in a very matter-of-fact way in her Mass Media and American Politics text, in 1963 that the phenomenon of the "Thalidomide babies" produced calls for "therapeutic" surgical abortions to be made "legal."

The anti-family movement, which started with efforts on the part of Masonically-controlled state legislatures to liberalize existing divorce laws in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, gained great impetus with Margaret Sanger's Birth Control League in 1919 and numerous organizations devoted to "eugenics" in the 1920s, some of which were successful in convincing state legislatures ton enact mandatory sterilization laws for criminals and the retarded (once again, thank you states' rights). That anti-family movement, which comes from the devil and is designed to lead souls to Hell for all eternity as social order is disrupted as a result of the breakup of the family, had been given its "wedge" issue as a result of the Thalidomide babies, giving its leaders a "cause" to try to open the legal floodgates to surgical abortion-on-demand to complement the chemical abortions being produced by the "pill" and other abortifacient contraceptives. Indeed, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists issued a statement in 1965, shortly after the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), that declared in a most positivistic manner that drugs that stopped the life of a child after fertilization but before implantation in a mother's womb were to be called "contraceptives" instead of "abortifacients."

As I have noted in many other articles on this site, Roe v. Wade did not "start" the genocide of the preborn in this country that has taken over fifty million innocent human lives since 1965. The move for the decriminalization of surgical baby-killing began at the state level (so much for demigod of states' rights) as pro-abortion leaders such as Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of the National Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called NARAL-Pro Choice), and Lawrence Lader and William Baird, among others used the existence of various "exceptions" in abortion legislation then on the books as the means of "liberalizing" "access" to baby-killing for all women in all circumstances. The move for decriminalized baby-killing under cover of law started at the state level, moving into the Federal court system only when pro-death advocates believed that it was propitious for them to challenge the laws of those states which prohibited or restricted "access" to baby-killing.

It is useful to review some of the history of decriminalizing surgical baby-killing under cover of civil law prior to Roe v. Wade. Those who contend that the "people" in the various states have the "right" to determine whether to permit or prohibit surgical baby-killing would have no problem with the pre-Roe legislation, nor would they be bothered by the fact that many states have "trigger laws" in effect to "protect" baby-killing in the event that Roe v. Wade is reversed at some point by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

The State of Colorado was the first to "liberalize" its existing legislation, doing so in 1967:

The pre-Roe abortion statute was based upon § 230.3 of the Model Penal Code.  Under the statute, an abortion could be performed at any stage of pregnancy (defined as “the implantation of an embryo in the uterus”) when continuation of the pregnancy was likely to result in the death of the woman, “serious permanent impairment” of her physical or mental health, or the birth of a child with “grave and permanent physical deformity or mental retardation. An abortion could be performed within the first sixteen weeks of pregnancy (gestational age) when the pregnancy resulted from rape (statutory or forcible) or incest, and the local district attorney confirmed in writing that there was probable cause to believe that the alleged offense had occurred Pursuant to Roe v. Wade, the limitations on circumstances under which abortions could be performed and the requirement that all abortions be performed in hospitals were declared unconstitutional by the Colorado Supreme Court in People v. Norton. Enforcement of the statute was not enjoined.

The pre-Roe statute has not been repealed, and would be enforceable if Roe v. Wade were overruled.  The broad exceptions in the statute, however, in particular the exception for mental health, would allow almost all abortions to be performed. Colorado, Life Legal Defense Fund.

 

The State of California, then headed by Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan, followed suit in 1967, passing the Therapeutic Abortion Act, has long been a haven for baby-killing:

The pre-Roe abortion statutes were based upon § 230.3 of the Model Penal Code. The California Penal Code prohibited abortions not performed in compliance with the “Therapeutic Abortion Act” of 1967, and made a woman’s participation in her own abortion a criminal offense (subject to the same exception).  The Therapeutic Abortion Act authorized the performance of an abortion on a pregnant woman if the procedure was performed by a licensed physician and surgeon in an accredited hospital, and was unanimously approved in advance by a medical staff committee.  An abortion could not be approved unless the committee found that there was a “substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother,” or that “[t]he pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.”  An abortion could not be performed on grounds of rape or incest unless there was probable cause to believe that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.  No abortion could be approved after the twentieth week of pregnancy for any reason.

In a pre-Roe decision, the California Supreme Court declared substantial provisions of the Therapeutic Abortion Act unconstitutional on state and federal due process grounds (vagueness).  Sections 274 and 275 of the Penal Code were repealed in 2000, the Therapeutic Abortion Act was repealed in 2002.  None of these statutes would be revived by a decision overruling Roe v. Wade. Abortions could be performed for any reason before viability, and for virtually any reason after viability.

Finally, regardless of Roe, any attempt to enact meaningful restrictions on abortion in California would be precluded by the California Supreme Court’s 1981 decision in Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights v Myers.  In Myers, the state supreme court struck down restrictions on public funding of abortion on state constitutional grounds (privacy).  In the course of its decision, the court stated that under the privacy guarantee of the state constitution,  “all women in this state–rich and poor alike–possess a fundamental constitutional right to choose whether or not to bear a child." California, Life Legal Defense Fund

 

The State of Oregon, whose Masonically-controlled state legislature once compelled the attendance of all children of school age in state-run schools, effectively prohibiting parochial and other privately-run schools from operating (a law that was struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925), passed its own pro-death legislation in 1969:

 

The pre-Roe statutes were based on § 230.3 of the Model Penal Code.  The statutes allowed an abortion to be performed before the one hundred fiftieth day of pregnancy when (1) there was “substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy [would] greatly impair the physical or mental health of the mother,” (2) “the child would be born with serious physical or mental defect,” or (3) the pregnancy resulted from felonious intercourse.  After the one hundred fiftieth day, abortion was permitted only if “the life of the pregnant woman [was] in imminent danger.”

Pursuant to Roe, most of these statutes were declared unconstitutional in an unreported decision of a three-judge federal court, and were later repealed.  The pre-Roe statutes would not be revived by a decision overruling Roe v. Wade.  Abortions could be performed for any reason at any stage of pregnancy. Oregon, Life Legal Defense Fund.

 

The State of New York passed legislation in 1970, albeit by one vote in the State Senate (cast by a Catholic, State Senator Edward Speno of East Meadow, Long Island, New York), to permit baby-killing through the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.

The pre-Roe statutes allowed abortion on demand through the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.  After the twenty-fourth week, an abortion could be performed on a pregnant woman only if there was “a reasonable belief that such is necessary to preserve her life.  In a pre-Roe decision, the New York Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the law brought by a guardian ad litem for unborn children  The legality of abortion would not be affected by the overruling of Roe v. Wade.  The pre-Roe statutes, which have not been repealed, allow abortion on demand through the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.  After the twenty-fourth week, however, abortions could be performed only to preserve the woman’s life.

Regardless of Roe, any attempt to prohibit abortion (at least before viability) in New York probably would be barred by language in the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in Hope v. Perales, a challenge to the New York Prenatal Care Assistance Program.  In Hope, the court of appeals noted in passing that “it is undisputed by defendants that the fundamental right of reproductive choice, inherent in the due process liberty right guaranteed by our State Constitution, is at least as extensive as the Federal constitutional right [recognized in Roe v. Wade].” New York, Life Legal Defense Fund.

 

The movement to decriminalize baby-killing in the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, started in the states, and it would remain perfectly legal in most of those states if Roe v. Wade, decided thirty-five years ago this very day, January 22, 1973, was reversed today. Only one state, Arkansas, has legislation in place that would ban all surgical baby-killing with no exceptions whatsoever. Another seven states (Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) would prohibit surgical baby-killing with the so-called "life of the mother exception." Those eight states represent a total of ten percent of the population of the United States of America. Surgical baby-killing would remain legal, both as a result of existing state laws and/or provisions or the decisions of various state courts, in forty-two states and the District of Columbia, meaning that the American slaughter of the innocent preborn via surgical means would be fully accessible to ninety percent of the American population. And those who think that entire generations of children who have been raised in the culture of ready access to contraception and abortion are going to have an "epiphany" during adulthood about the errors of their past training are not thinking clearly about the state in which we find ourselves at present.

Indifference on January 22, 1973, Indifference on January 22, 2008

Indifference is what has characterized the past forty-one years since state legislatures began to "liberalize" existing statutes concerning abortion and the past thirty-five years since the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Roe v. Wade. Indifference.

There was even indifference on the actual day of Roe as two other events overshadowed the Supreme Court's decision: the death of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the announcement made by President Richard Milhous Nixon that a "peace accord" had been reached at the Paris Peace Talks between National Security Adviser Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the representative of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Communist North Vietnam) to bring American involvement in Vietnam to a close while permitting North Vietnamese army regulars and Viet Cong guerillas (whose interests were represented Madame Nguyen Thi Binh) to remain in "enclaves" in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam,). These two events overshadowed the decision in Roe, which would lead to a period in American history with a casualty figure eclipsing that of the American dead in the Vietnam War by slightly under a thousand times.

Indifference will mark this day as over 100,000 pro-life Americans will gather in the nation's capital for the annual March for Life, an event that has become much too celebratory over the years. We have nothing to celebrate. We have much to mourn as the American slaughter of the preborn continues on a daily basis, both by means of surgical and chemical abortions.

Indifference to the Proximate Root Causes of Abortion: The Overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King

More than the indifference over the daily slaughter of the preborn, however, is the indifference that even those who call themselves pro-life have about the root causes of how we have come to such a state of affairs as that most people in a nation that professes itself to be "civilized"--and deems itself to be judge of whether other nations in the world are "worthy" of being considered as "civilized" as itself--can go about their business each day without giving a single thought (and I mean not a single, solitary thought) to the outrages being committed against God and man by means of the slicing and dicing of innocent preborn children under cover of law.

Most pro-life Americans are so busy finding "political" and "legal" and "constitutional" "strategies" that they are totally disinterested in even learning about how we have arrived at this point in history. Most people prefer to believe in partial-truths about "activist" judges and "loose" constitutional construction, reacting with outrage when they are told that the real proximate cause for each of our social problems, including abortion, is the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt in the Sixteenth Century and the rise of anthropocentricity (a man-centered view of the world) associated with Judeo-Masonry and with the variety of naturalistic "philosophies" and ideologies that were spawned from the time of the so-called Age of the Enlightenment to our present day.

By Reason Alone One Can Come to Understand That Abortion is Forbidden by the Natural Law

It is therefore necessary on this thirty-fifth anniversary of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Roe v. Wade to examine some rather basic facts about the taking of innocent human life in the womb, which is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance and can never be justified as belong to the province of the "people" to "permit" no matter what form of government under which they live.

One can come to a principled opposition to the taking of innocent human life on the basis of reason alone unaided by the light of the Divine Revelation that has been entrusted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ exclusively to the Catholic Church He Himself founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Some of the pagan physicians and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were able to conclude that the taking of innocent human life in the womb was prohibited by the precepts of the Natural Law. Hippocrates did so in his Hippocratic Oath, which was changed by the American Murderers Association (er, the American Medical Association):

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

 

The Roman playwright Juvenal, who lived in the early Second Century A.D. and was fierce hater of Christians, had this to say about the crime of the murder of innocent preborn children:

 

So great is the skill, so powerful the drugs, of the abortionist, paid to murder mankind within the womb. Ancient History Sourcebook: Juvenal: Satire VI 

 

Even a proto-feminist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who organized the first "women's rights" conference in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, referred to abortion as "disgusting and degrading crime," going on to write:

When you consider that women have been treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library.)

 

Yes, it is possible by reason alone to come to recognize that a child, an innocent preborn human being, is the natural fruit of human conjugal relations. It is an accident if one falls down a flight of stairs. It is an accident if the motor vehicle one is driving goes out of control on an icy road. It is not an "accident" if a child is conceived as the result of human conjugal relations. To invade the sanctuary of the womb, therefore, in order to suck out, burn, slice or otherwise destroy a living human being is opposed to the very laws of nature itself. And if the child inside a mother's womb is not alive, why is it necessary to kill it? As to the child's humanity, you see, even secular science has proved that every fertilized embryonic human being has a distinctive DNA of his very own that does not change over the course of his life. All that is added, physically and temporally speaking, is time and nutrition.

As I said to an abortion advocate in a debate at Hofstra University, Hempstead, Long Island, New York, on the Feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 1985:

"I will quit this debate right now if you can demonstrate to me which one of the cells in your body has a DNA structure different from the moment that you were conceived."

 

No true, objective biologist can deny the fact that a living, growing human being is created at the moment of fertilization. Ideologues can deny all arguments that can be advanced by means of reason and science, however, which is why arguing against abortion on the grounds of reason alone only takes one so far. Indeed, it is precisely because of naturalism that we have abortion-on-demand and in most other countries in the "developed" world today. Naturalistic arguments are not going to end abortion-on-demand, although the use of scientific facts and basic Natural Law reasoning can be useful as tools to help people to see through some of the illogic of the pro-death arguments. Such arguments are merely "building blocks," if you will, to lead people to accept the simple fact that it is God Himself Who has ordained these immutable facts of nature that do not depend upon human acceptance for their binding force or for their validity.

Reason Only Takes Us So Far; We Need Divine Revelation as Taught by the Catholic Church

Yes, it is from Divine Revelation that we must oppose the evils of our day, including the evil of abortion, as we try to plant the seeds as the totally consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother for the conversion of men and their nations to an acceptance of the Catholic Faith as the one and only basis of personal and social order. All other "solutions" are really no "solutions" at all. They are illusions from the devil designed to distract people from the simple truth that it is a complete and humble subordination of all that we do, both individually in our own lives and collectively with others in society, to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself through His Catholic Church that we can root out sin and vice from our own lives and thus to ameliorate its effects in every aspect of the life of our nations.

The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity--the Logos, the Word--through Whom all things were made could have become Man in any way of His choosing. He chose to become Man by being conceived as a helpless embryo in His Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost. Our Lord thereby placed Himself in solidarity with every child in every mother's womb no matter the condition of the conception and no matter the condition of the child conceived, whether "healthy" or suffering from some physical "deformity."

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is God. He is the Lord of history, knowing all things. He knew what would be happening in the world in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries as hundreds of millions of babies worldwide would be killed by means of chemical and surgical abortions. He was teaching while He spent nine months in the tabernacle of His Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb that an attack upon an innocent preborn human being is a mystical attack upon Himself:

And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. (Mt. 25: 40.)

 

No one can say that he "loves" Our Lord but nevertheless supports His mystical destruction in the persons of preborn babies in their mothers' wombs under cover of law, whether by surgical or chemical means. Those Catholics who say that they are "good Catholics" who "love" Our Lord while supporting the destruction of the least of His brethren in the womb are supporting an indirect attack on the Incarnation itself. Our Lord chose to be the prisoner of Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb. He teaches us that each preborn human life is inviolable from any direct, intentional attack upon it. No human being, whether acting individually or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance, has any authority found in the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law or the Natural Law to permit one single abortion, whether by chemical or surgical means.

Opposing abortion is as simple as saying: "God has given us His Fifth Commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill.' This is the end of the argument. Period."

Although various theologians over the centuries argued about when "ensoulment" takes place, such arguments are extraneous to the simple fact that an innocent human life never may be targeted deliberately as the first object of an attack upon it. Moreover, although Holy Mother Church has never defined "ensoulment" as such in a de fide manner as it relates to abortion, she has taught us that Our Lord had a true human nature hypostatically united to His Sacred Divinity at the moment of His Incarnation, that is, at the moment of His conception by the power of God the Holy Ghost. He had to have His Theandric soul at that moment, just as His Most Blessed Mother was preserved from all stain of Original and Actual Sin from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception in the womb of her mother, Good Saint Ann.

Pope Pius XI and Abortion

Noting the push of the anti-family movement in the 1920s that had resulted in laws in the United States and the Weimar Republic of Germany favorable to contraception and eugenic sterilization, as well as laws in the the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic that permitted surgical abortion-on-demand and in Germany that permitted surgical abortion in cases where a mother's life was said to be endangered, Pope Pius XI wrote the following in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930:

But another very grave crime is to be noted, Venerable Brethren, which regards the taking of the life of the offspring hidden in the mother's womb. Some wish it to be allowed and left to the will of the father or the mother; others say it is unlawful unless there are weighty reasons which they call by the name of medical, social, or eugenic "indication." Because this matter falls under the penal laws of the state by which the destruction of the offspring begotten but unborn is forbidden, these people demand that the "indication," which in one form or another they defend, be recognized as such by the public law and in no way penalized. There are those, moreover, who ask that the public authorities provide aid for these death-dealing operations, a thing, which, sad to say, everyone knows is of very frequent occurrence in some places.

As to the "medical and therapeutic indication" to which, using their own words, we have made reference, Venerable Brethren, however much we may pity the mother whose health and even life is gravely imperiled in the performance of the duty allotted to her by nature, nevertheless what could ever be a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct murder of the innocent? This is precisely what we are dealing with here. Whether inflicted upon the mother or upon the child, it is against the precept of God and the law of nature: "Thou shalt not kill:" The life of each is equally sacred, and no one has the power, not even the public authority, to destroy it. It is of no use to appeal to the right of taking away life for here it is a question of the innocent, whereas that right has regard only to the guilty; nor is there here question of defense by bloodshed against an unjust aggressor (for who would call an innocent child an unjust aggressor?); again there is not question here of what is called the "law of extreme necessity" which could even extend to the direct killing of the innocent. Upright and skillful doctors strive most praiseworthily to guard and preserve the lives of both mother and child; on the contrary, those show themselves most unworthy of the noble medical profession who encompass the death of one or the other, through a pretense at practicing medicine or through motives of misguided pity.

All of which agrees with the stern words of the Bishop of Hippo in denouncing those wicked parents who seek to remain childless, and failing in this, are not ashamed to put their offspring to death: "Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to seek to procure a baneful sterility, and if this fails the fetus conceived in the womb is in one way or another smothered or evacuated, in the desire to destroy the offspring before it has life, or if it already lives in the womb, to kill it before it is born. If both man and woman are party to such practices they are not spouses at all; and if from the first they have carried on thus they have come together not for honest wedlock, but for impure gratification; if both are not party to these deeds, I make bold to say that either the one makes herself a mistress of the husband, or the other simply the paramour of his wife."

What is asserted in favor of the social and eugenic "indication" may and must be accepted, provided lawful and upright methods are employed within the proper limits; but to wish to put forward reasons based upon them for the killing of the innocent is unthinkable and contrary to the divine precept promulgated in the words of the Apostle: Evil is not to be done that good may come of it.

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven.

 

"States' righters" should take particular note of the last paragraph above: "Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven." In other words, it is not up to the "people" or to their "state governments" to do anything except to determine what kind of penalties will be imposed upon those who participate in the killing of the innocent preborn. This is, as noted about five weeks ago now, a matter of God's rights, not states' rights.

Indeed, the rise of the naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, semi-Pelagian civil state of Modernity has made mere mortals--contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave prior to the General Resurrection of the Dead on the Last Day--the arbiters of moral right and moral wrong. Men no longer subordinate themselves and their nations to the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church in matters that pertain to the good of souls. They no longer recognize her Divinely-instituted right to interpose herself as a last resort--following the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation--with the leaders of civil governments when the good of souls demands her maternal intervention. There is no longer a "brake" or a "check" upon the arbitrary misuse of civil power by men, making either individuals (as in the case of Protestant potentates in the immediate aftermath of the Protestant Revolt) or collectivities (various forms of "representative" government) the arbiters of moral right and moral wrong.

As I have noted before, a government organized rightly would recognize that civil laws and ordinances and judicial decisions and executive decrees contrary to the good of souls could be nullified by the plenary veto power of the Papal Nuncio--or some other representative agreed to in a Concordat between the Church and the state, thus ending the matter once and for all. Due warning would be given. All care would be taken to utilize such a plenary power judiciously and only when an action undertaken by the civil government is injurious in a most grievous manner to the good of souls. However, the recognition by the officials of a civil government of such a plenary power on the part of Holy Mother Church is an absolute precondition to the pursuit of justice in the temporal realm in light of the last end of man, which is the possession of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven.

A constitution, whether written or unwritten (as is the case in the United Kingdom), that admits of no higher authority above the text of its own words is as defenseless against the efforts of legal positivists to render its words into meaninglessness as the words of Sacred Scripture are in the hands of Protestants and Modernist Catholics. It is relatively easy to render a human document into meaninglessness if one can do so with the very written Word of God Himself once one rejects the absolute and totally binding authority of the Catholic Church to guide men in all that pertains to the salvation of their immortal souls. Men must be enslaved to this or that false philosophy or ideology if they do not bind themselves to the liberating truths entrusted by the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, solely to His Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. It is that simple.

Not a Single Abortion, No Exceptions, No Compromise of Catholic Truth, Not Once, Ever

No Catholic can support even a single abortion in a single circumstance whatsoever. No Catholic can lend credence to anyone who believes that it is morally licit under any circumstances whatsoever, including any or all of the so-called "hard case exceptions," to kill an preborn human being in his mother's womb. No Catholic can lend credence to anyone who believes that it is morally licit to prescribe any form of contraception, no less those that do indeed cause the death of an embryonic human being. To lend credence to those who believe that abortion is a matter of "states' rights" or that there is even one exception to the absolute inviolability of innocent human life in the womb or to those who support, if not prescribe, contraceptives of any type is to give voice to the devil himself, who wants nothing more than to convince Catholics that the perverted concept of "civil liberty" that has come into vogue in the past few centuries is higher than the law of God as He has entrusted it to His Catholic Church for its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping.

Alas, even those Catholics who are pro-life, no matter where they fall across the ecclesiastical divide, do not understand or accept these facts. They are willing to accept "crumb" from phony pro-life politicians in the false belief that we will "get somewhere" by means of the political process. We will not. Many of these truly good people, a lot of whom have worked their entire lives to defend the inviolability of preborn human life by volunteering at crisis pregnancy centers and by praying Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary in front of abortuaries and by speaking out against this crime that cries out to Heaven for vengeance, are looking for naturalistic solutions to the abortion genocide precisely because they have never been taught by the scions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that the proximate cause for social problems in our world today is the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and that we must try to plant the seeds for the restoration of this Social Kingship, starting with the enthronement of our homes to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Faith, The Faith, The Faith

Most Catholics have never even heard of, no less read, this beautiful and moving summary of Catholic truth found in Pope Leo XIII's Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, that has been oft-quoted on this site:

We are indeed now very far removed in time from the first beginnings of Redemption; but what difference does this make when the benefits thereof are perennial and immortal? He who once hath restored human nature ruined by sin the same preserveth and will preserve it for ever. "He gave Himself a redemption for all" (1 Timothy ii., 6)."In Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Corinthians xv., 22). "And of His Kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i., 33). Hence by God's eternal decree the salvation of all men, both severally and collectively, depends upon Jesus Christ. Those who abandon Him become guilty by the very fact, in their blindness and folly, of their own ruin; whilst at the same time they do all that in them lies to bring about a violent reaction of mankind in the direction of that mass of evils and miseries from which the Redeemer in His mercy had freed them.

Those who go astray from the road wander far from the goal they aim at. Similarly, if the pure and true light of truth be rejected, men's minds must necessarily be darkened and their souls deceived by deplorably false ideas. What hope of salvation can they have who abandon the very principle and fountain of life? Christ alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John xiv., 6). If He be abandoned the three necessary conditions of salvation are removed.

It is surely unnecessary to prove, what experience constantly shows and what each individual feels in himself, even in the very midst of all temporal prosperity-that in God alone can the human will find absolute and perfect peace. God is the only end of man. All our life on earth is the truthful and exact image of a pilgrimage. Now Christ is the "Way," for we can never reach God, the supreme and ultimate good, by this toilsome and doubtful road of mortal life, except with Christ as our leader and guide. How so? Firstly and chiefly by His grace; but this would remain "void" in man if the precepts of His law were neglected. For, as was necessarily the case after Jesus Christ had won our salvation, He left behind Him His Law for the protection and welfare of the human race, under the guidance of which men, converted from evil life, might safely tend towards God. "Going, teach ye all nations . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew xxviii., 19-20). "Keep my commandments" john xiv., 15). Hence it will be understood that in the Christian religion the first and most necessary condition is docility to the precepts of Jesus Christ, absolute loyalty of will towards Him as Lord and King. A serious duty, and one which oftentimes calls for strenuous labour, earnest endeavour, and perseverance! For although by Our Redeemer's grace human nature hath been regenerated, still there remains in each individual a certain debility and tendency to evil. Various natural appetites attract man on one side and the other; the allurements of the material world impel his soul to follow after what is pleasant rather than the law of Christ. Still we must strive our best and resist our natural inclinations with all our strength "unto the obedience of Christ." For unless they obey reason they become our masters, and carrying the whole man away from Christ, make him their slave. "Men of corrupt mind, who have made shipwreck of the faith, cannot help being slaves. . . They are slaves to a threefold concupiscence: of will, of pride, or of outward show" (St. Augustine, De Vera Religione, 37). In this contest every man must be prepared to undergo hard ships and troubles for Christ's sake. It is difficult to reject what so powerfully entices and delights. It is hard and painful to despise the supposed goods of the senses and of fortune for the will and precepts of Christ our Lord. But the Christian is absolutely obliged to be firm, and patient in suffering, if he wish to lead a Christian life. Have we forgotten of what Body and of what Head we are the members? "Having joy set before Him, He endured the Cross," and He bade us deny ourselves. The very dignity of human nature depends upon this disposition of mind. For, as even the ancient Pagan philosophy perceived, to be master of oneself and to make the lower part of the soul, obey the superior part, is so far from being a weakness of will that it is really a noble power, in consonance with right reason and most worthy of a man. Moreover, to bear and to suffer is the ordinary condition of man. Man can no more create for himself a life free from suffering and filled with all happiness that he can abrogate the decrees of his Divine Maker, who has willed that the consequences of original sin should be perpetual. It is reasonable, therefore, not to expect an end to troubles in this world, but rather to steel one's soul to bear troubles, by which we are taught to look forward with certainty to supreme happiness. Christ has not promised eternal bliss in heaven to riches, nor to a life of ease, to honours or to power, but to longsuffering and to tears, to the love of justice and to cleanness of heart.

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at.

Just as it is the height of misfortune to go astray from the "Way," so is it to abandon the "Truth." Christ Himself is the first, absolute and essential "Truth," inasmuch as He is the Word of God, consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, He and the Father being One. "I am the Way and the Truth." Wherefore if the Truth be sought by the human intellect, it must first of all submit it to Jesus Christ, and securely rest upon His teaching, since therein Truth itself speaketh. There are innumerable and extensive fields of thought, properly belonging to the human mind, in which it may have free scope for its investigations and speculations, and that not only agreeably to its nature, but even by a necessity of its nature. But what is unlawful and unnatural is that the human mind should refuse to be restricted within its proper limits, and, throwing aside its becoming modesty, should refuse to acknowledge Christ's teaching. This teaching, upon which our salvation depends, is almost entirely about God and the things of God. No human wisdom has invented it, but the Son of God hath received and drunk it in entirely from His Father: "The words which thou gavest me, I have given to them" john xvii., 8). Hence this teaching necessarily embraces many subjects which are not indeed contrary to reasonfor that would be an impossibility-but so exalted that we can no more attain them by our own reasoning than we can comprehend God as He is in Himself. If there be so many things hidden and veiled by nature, which no human ingenuity can explain, and yet which no man in his senses can doubt, it would be an abuse of liberty to refuse to accept those which are entirely above nature, because their essence cannot be discovered. To reject dogma is simply to deny Christianity. Our intellect must bow humbly and reverently "unto the obedience of Christ," so that it be held captive by His divinity and authority: "bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians x., 5). Such obedience Christ requires, and justly so. For He is God, and as such holds supreme dominion over man's intellect as well as over his will. By obeying Christ with his intellect man by no means acts in a servile manner, but in complete accordance with his reason and his natural dignity. For by his will he yields, not to the authority of any man, but to that of God, the author of his being, and the first principle to Whom he is subject by the very law of his nature. He does not suffer himself to be forced by the theories of any human teacher, but by the eternal and unchangeable truth. Hence he attains at one and the same time the natural good of the intellect and his own liberty. For the truth which proceeds from the teaching of Christ clearly demonstrates the real nature and value of every being; and man, being endowed with this knowledge, if he but obey the truth as perceived, will make all things subject to himself, not himself to them; his appetites to his reason, not his reason to his appetites. Thus the slavery of sin and falsehood will be shaken off, and the most perfect liberty attained: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" john viii., 32). It is, then, evident that those whose intellect rejects the yoke of Christ are obstinately striving against God. Having shaken off God's authority, they are by no means freer, for they will fall beneath some human sway. They are sure to choose someone whom they will listen to, obey, and follow as their guide. Moreover, they withdraw their intellect from the communication of divine truths, and thus limit it within a narrower circle of knowledge, so that they are less fitted to succeed in the pursuit even of natural science. For there are in nature very many things whose apprehension or explanation is greatly aided by the light of divine truth. Not unfrequently, too, God, in order to chastise their pride, does not permit men to see the truth, and thus they are punished in the things wherein they sin. This is why we often see men of great intellectual power and erudition making the grossest blunders even in natural science.

10. It must therefore be clearly admitted that, in the life of a Christian, the intellect must be entirely subject to God's authority. And if, in this submission of reason to authority, our self-love, which is so strong, is restrained and made to suffer, this only proves the necessity to a Christian of long-suffering not only in will but also in intellect. We would remind those persons of this truth who desire a kind of Christianity such as they themselves have devised, whose precepts should be very mild, much more indulgent towards human nature, and requiring little if any hardships to be borne. They do not properly under stand the meaning of faith and Christian precepts. They do not see that the Cross meets us everywhere, the model of our life, the eternal standard of all who wish to follow Christ in reality and not merely in name.

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.

 

The conciliarists seek to oppose abortion largely, although not exclusively, on the grounds of the Natural Law alone. As Pope Leo XIII demonstrated in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, the Natural Law alone is insufficient to retard social evils. We need the Catholic Faith. Consider once again these telling words from Tametsi:

We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

 

Having made war against the Social Reign of Christ King by its embrace of "religious liberty" and "healthy secularity--and blasphemed Him by means of the Novus Ordo Missae, the counterfeit church of conciliarism has actually fed into the social evils it seeks to oppose as it robs Catholics yet attached to its structures of the means by which they can see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith and thus come to a recognition that we must be uncompromisingly Catholic in thought, word and speech at a times and in all circumstances without any exception whatsoever. The conciliarists have robbed Catholics of the ability to look that the following statement of Pope Saint Pius X, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, and to recognize the truth contained therein:

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

The same applies to the notion of Fraternity [of the Sillon] which they found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.

Indeed, we have the human experience of pagan and secular societies of ages past to show that concern for common interests or affinities of nature weigh very little against the passions and wild desires of the heart. No, Venerable Brethren, there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Saviour, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness.

By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being a progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.. . .

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body.

This being said, what must be thought of the promiscuity in which young Catholics will be caught up with heterodox and unbelieving folk in a work of this nature? Is it not a thousand-fold more dangerous for them than a neutral association? What are we to think of this appeal to all the heterodox, and to all the unbelievers, to prove the excellence of their convictions in the social sphere in a sort of apologetic contest? Has not this contest lasted for nineteen centuries in conditions less dangerous for the faith of Catholics? And was it not all to the credit of the Catholic Church? What are we to think of this respect for all errors, and of this strange invitation made by a Catholic to all the dissidents to strengthen their convictions through study so that they may have more and more abundant sources of fresh forces? What are we to think of an association in which all religions and even Free-Thought may express themselves openly and in complete freedom? For the Sillonists who, in public lectures and elsewhere, proudly proclaim their personal faith, certainly do not intend to silence others nor do they intend to prevent a Protestant from asserting his Protestantism, and the skeptic from affirming his skepticism. Finally, what are we to think of a Catholic who, on entering his study group, leaves his Catholicism outside the door so as not to alarm his comrades who, “dreaming of disinterested social action, are not inclined to make it serve the triumph of interests, coteries and even convictions whatever they may be”? Such is the profession of faith of the New Democratic Committee for Social Action which has taken over the main objective of the previous organization and which, they say, “breaking the double meaning which surround the Greater Sillon both in reactionary and anti-clerical circles”, is now open to all men “who respect moral and religious forces and who are convinced that no genuine social emancipation is possible without the leaven of generous idealism.”

Alas! yes, the double meaning has been broken: the social action of the Sillon is no longer Catholic. The Sillonist, as such, does not work for a coterie, and “the Church”, he says, “cannot in any sense benefit from the sympathies that his action may stimulate.” A strange situation, indeed! They fear lest the Church should profit for a selfish and interested end by the social action of the Sillon, as if everything that benefited the Church did not benefit the whole human race! A curious reversal of notions! The Church might benefit from social action! As if the greatest economists had not recognized and proved that it is social action alone which, if serious and fruitful, must benefit the Church! But stranger still, alarming and saddening at the same time, are the audacity and frivolity of men who call themselves Catholics and dream of re-shaping society under such conditions, and of establishing on earth, over and beyond the pale of the Catholic Church, "the reign of love and justice" with workers coming from everywhere, of all religions and of no religion, with or without beliefs, so long as they forego what might divide them - their religious and philosophical convictions, and so long as they share what unites them - a "generous idealism and moral forces drawn from whence they can" When we consider the forces, knowledge, and supernatural virtues which are necessary to establish the Christian City, and the sufferings of millions of martyrs, and the light given by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the self-sacrifice of all the heroes of charity, and a powerful hierarchy ordained in heaven, and the streams of Divine Grace - the whole having been built up, bound together, and impregnated by the life and spirit of Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, the Word made man - when we think, I say, of all this, it is frightening to behold new apostles eagerly attempting to do better by a common interchange of vague idealism and civic virtues. What are they going to produce? What is to come of this collaboration? A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed, but which will benefit the less Utopian exploiters of the people. Yes, we can truly say that the Sillon, its eyes fixed on a chimera, brings Socialism in its train.

We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the "Kingdom of God". - "We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind."

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.

 

Not having any exposure whatsoever to these truths--indeed, having been taught the lies of the Sillonists by the conciliarists as the very means to do with social problems, so many Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide look to phony pro-life politicians, each of whom is steeped in a variety of naturalistic errors, as the means of providing them "hope" as over 1.2 million babies a year continue to be slaughtered by surgical means in the United States of America alone. Overlooked is the fact that any reduction in the rate of surgical abortions is the result of the Rosaries and the sacrifices and other prayers and meritorious acts of Catholics who seek to cooperate with the graces won for them by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 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.

The sad reality, however, is that chemical abortions, especially by means of RU-486, the French abortion pill, are on the rise, as an article in today's Washington Post indicates:

As Abortion Rate Drops, Use of RU-486 Is on Rise

By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 22, 2008; Page A01

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision, a pill that has largely faded from the rancorous public debate over abortion has slowly and quietly begun to transform the experience of ending a pregnancy in the United States.

This Story

• As Abortion Rate Drops, Use of RU-486 Is on Rise
• More Women Use Pill for Abortions

The French abortion pill RU-486, on the market since 2000, has become an increasingly common alternative, making abortion less clinical and more private. At a time when the overall number of abortions has been steadily declining, RU-486-induced abortions have been rising by 22 percent a year and now account for 14 percent of the total -- and more than one in five early abortions performed by the ninth week of pregnancy.

The pill, often called "miffy" after its chemical name mifepristone and brand name Mifeprex, also has helped slow the decline in abortion providers, as more physicians who previously did not perform the procedure discreetly start to prescribe the pill.

"The impact and the promise is huge," said Beth Jordan, medical director of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. "It's going a long way towards normalizing abortion."

When the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone in 2000, some predicted it would revolutionize the abortion experience and debate by enabling women to get an abortion from any doctor, neutralizing one of opponents' most potent strategies -- picketing abortion clinics.

"The thinking initially was that this was going to change everything. There was a lot of hype. That didn't pan out," said Carole Joffe, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Davis. "But the impact has been happening gradually as it slowly and steadily is becoming integrated into the medical system."

Judi Gilbert, 41, a nurse in Philadelphia, opted for mifepristone in 2005 when she had her second abortion. She had a 3-year-old son and was about to start a new job.

"It was something I could do at home and be with my husband," Gilbert said of taking the pill. "It was a decision we made together alone, and we were able to take care of it this way alone. It was just a much more private affair."

She added: "I wouldn't say it was easy -- it's never easy to terminate a pregnancy. But in the grand scheme of things, it was much more pleasant than a surgical procedure."

Gilbert is one of more than 840,000 U.S. women who have used mifepristone since it was approved, according to Danco Laboratories, which sells it.

The drug ends a pregnancy by blocking the hormone progesterone. Women take the pill in the doctor's office and then go home, where they take another drug, misoprostol, to trigger contractions, essentially causing a miscarriage. Women then return to the doctor within about two weeks to make sure the process worked.

The price of the procedure varies. Standard abortions typically cost about $400, and the pill can cost the same to about $100 more.

About 150,000 of the 1.2 million abortions in the United States in 2006 were done with medication, the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive-health research organization, estimated recently.

More than half of abortion providers now offer the option, a 70 percent increase from the first half of 2001, Guttmacher said.

"Mifepristone is clearly starting to become an important part of the abortion provision in the United States," said Lawrence Finer, who studies the drug at Guttmacher. "I think we'll continue to see increases."

He noted that in some European countries, more than 60 percent of abortions are performed with the drug.

The increase is alarming to abortion opponents, who are expecting thousands to gather in the District today to protest Roe v. Wade on its 35th anniversary.

"This troubles me," said Randall K. O'Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee. "It obviously shows that the marketing efforts have been effective in getting doctors to introduce this into their practices."

O'Bannon questioned the drug's safety, citing a handful of reports of women who have died from severe complications from bacterial infections. "The idea that doctors are beginning to offer something that has a record of causing some serious problems is very troubling," he said. Supporters say that it remains unclear whether the complications were related to the drug and that overall the method has been shown to be extremely safe.

"The availability of mifepristone gives women another safe and effective way to terminate a pregnancy," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, which estimates that 83 percent of its 400 member clinics offer the drug.

The increase in mifepristone use has been fueled in part by more doctors and clinics that previously did not perform abortions now offering the drug. Guttmacher identified at least 119 and said those practices have slowed the decline in abortion services. The number of providers fell 2 percent from 1994 to 2005 -- a much slower decline than before the drug became available. Without mifepristone, the drop would have been 8 percent.

Ruth Lesnewski, a family physician in New York, did not perform abortions until mifepristone was approved.

"It allows abortion to happen in a more private, secure setting -- a doctor's office and a woman's home, rather than an easily targeted clinic," she said. "It's been a surprisingly smooth and rewarding experience for such a fraught area of life. My patients really tremendously appreciate being able to end an unwanted pregnancy privately and quickly."

Other doctors have begun to offer mifepristone in addition to surgical abortion.

"For some women, they like to have a more active role rather than just having something done to them," said Deborah Oyer, a family-practice doctor in Seattle. "For some, it feels in some ways more natural because it feels more like their body is doing it."

Some doctors walk a delicate line. One doctor in Albuquerque, for example, said she does not use in the pill at one of her offices but does offer it along with standard abortions at a clinic where she works. At another clinic, she provides only the pill.

"My office is in a politically charged part of the community, so I try to be as diplomatic as possible," she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "But at my other office, we can do an abortion where no one has to know -- not even the support staff."

The proportion of abortions being done with the drug varies widely, with some providers saying mifepristone accounts for about 10 percent and others reporting it accounts for two-thirds.

"We see 10 to 12 patients a week who want it," said Mary Frank, who runs the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health. "I've noticed that the women who want this have really done their homework. They know exactly what the process is and really have made a very conscious decision about their choice."

Women's experiences also vary widely.

"Some women say, 'It's the most horrible thing that ever happened and I'll never do it again,' and some women say, 'Heck, my period was worse than that,' " said Catherine McKegney, a family physician in St. Paul, Minn.

Mary, 25, an office administrator in Seattle, opted for mifepristone in December when she became pregnant and decided with her fiance that they were not ready to become parents.

"I liked the idea of being more in control," said Mary, who asked that her full name not be used. "I had some really, really bad cramps and had to take some Vicodin and ibuprofen to calm them down. But other than the cramps, it was pretty painless."

Victoria Reyes, 24, used mifepristone in 2006 when she became pregnant just before she was about to graduate from Ohio State University.

"It was one of the most difficult decisions I ever made in my life," she said. "My boyfriend and I got together and decided we were not in any position to financially afford a child. I chose it because it seemed like a more natural way."

But Reyes was surprised by how physically traumatic it turned out to be.

"It was one of the most painful experiences I've ever had," she said. "Not only were the cramps really bad, I was sweating and had a headache. I threw up at one point. It was pretty bad."

Reyes also had to take a second dose when an ultrasound showed she had not completed the abortion, requiring her to return to the clinic for a second time to confirm that the process was complete.

"I think I'm still glad I picked it," Reyes said. "I just wanted to be home and keep it private."

 

We have nothing to celebrate. We have much to mourn. Anyone who thinks that we are making "progress" is permitting himself to be deluded by false hopes in naturalism. A baby is just as dead as a result of a chemical abortifacient as he as a result of a surgical abortion. We have nothing to celebrate. We must continue to pray and to make sacrifices for the conversion of all of those involved in the killing of babies, making sure that one of the first intentions we remember in our prayers each day is that one child--and the soul of his mother--may be spared at each place where babies are killed or where baby-killing potions and pills are dispensed. No one who has participated in the violation of God's Sovereignty over the sanctity and fecundity of marital relations--and is unrepentant for his actions and beliefs--is fit to hold any office of public trust in any country at any time. Such a person is just as objectionable as those who support all abortions all the time without any restrictions whatsoever.

Some of you, my friends, are supporting for president a man whose actions by means of prescribing "the pill" for his female patients have killed babies. You are supporting a man who denies that his actions might have killed preborn babies. How can you call yourselves pro-life? The mere fact that a man believes that has done not so, that "the pill" does not work as an abortifacient in many instances, does not negate the actual scientific facts that prove "the pill" to be a baby-killing potion. (See: The Pill.)

We have nothing to celebrate. We have much to mourn, especially as Catholics attached to the naturalist "left" suspend their adherence to the Faith to support fully pro-abortion candidates while Catholics attached to the naturalist "right" suspend their adherence to the Faith to support an actual baby-killer who has grievously--and unrepentantly--offended God and wounded souls by his support for and active participation in contraception.

Modernity's Partner in Crime: Modernism and the Counterfeit Church of Conciliarism

Moreover, the counterfeit church of conciliarism is replete with "cardinals" and "archbishops" and "bishops" and "priests" and "consecrated" religious who have gone beyond even the approved novelties and errors of conciliarism, serving as enablers of pro-abortion Catholics in public life and by teaching Catholics in the pew that that they have the "right" to form their own consciences as they see fit, that the "church" cannot "tell" them what to think and how to act. Admitting a few exceptions here and there, most of those who have spoken and/or acted in such a manner in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have remained in perfectly "good standing" until their deaths, whereupon they are lionized as having been "good Catholics" throughout their lives (see: Brennan, Associate Justice William; O'Neil, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Thomas P.; Moynihan, former Senator Daniel P.; Speno, former State Senator Edward, et al.). How many Catholic women have had abortions because they were reaffirmed in their "right" to do so by "Catholic" "priests" and "religious." I know of several personally.

The situation is so diabolical that it has become common in the last twenty-five years or so to refer to a "pro-life" bishop or a "pro-life" priest. Excuse me? Isn't such an appellation supposed to be an oxymoron? This has enabled the devil to use the horror of the abortion genocide to make it appear as though a particular conciliar "bishop" is doing "his job" by appearing at an abortuary once a month to pray the Rosary, something that is certainly commendable, while he mandates explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, defying the absolute ban on such instruction imposed by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, and as he "presides" personally over the most egregious, blasphemous and sacrilegious "liturgies" (and approves or tolerates the "celebrations" of such liturgies by others), and as he tolerates doctrinal errors that even are beyond the pale of what conciliarism itself teaches while at the same time propagating the "approved" conciliar lies of false ecumenism, religious liberty, separation of Church and State, the new ecclesiology and the Hegelian/Modernist notion concerning the nature of dogmatic truth. Yes, "all" a conciliar "bishop" has to do to be "acceptable" in the eyes of "conservative" Catholics is to appear at an abortuary once a month and nothing else that it does to harm the Faith, including the protection and promotion of those "priests" who are steeped in personal perversity, is supposed to matter at all. The devil has used abortion in many insidious ways as souls continue to be aborted by the very ethos of conciliarism itself.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, noted the diabolical nature of any "reconciliation" with the spirit of the world, a "reconciliation" that is at the heart of conciliarism:

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God

 

Conciliarism's reconciliation with the revolutionary, anti-Incarnational spirit of Modernity has produced, at least in significant segments of the conciliar "hierarchy" in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world, the false theology of the "consistent ethic of life" (the late Joseph "Cardinal" Bernardin's "seamless garment") that has convinced so many Catholics that one cannot be "pro-life" unless one opposes the "death penalty" and supports the agenda of the naturalist "left" concerning how to "help" the materially poor by means of income redistribution programs, wrought by excessive taxation.

And what can be said about the wretched effects of the International Theological Commission's The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized, April 19, 2007, on reaffirming women, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, in the most erroneous belief that the souls of aborted babies go to Heaven.  It has been documented that at least two women have killed their babies after listening to a conciliar "bishop" in the United States of America give a talk on this subject in which he said that yes, indeed, all aborted babies go to Heaven. Please spare me the sophistry that the report of the International Theological Commission was not a "magisterial" act of the Catholic Church. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself had said as long ago as the early 1980s that he did not "like" the Church's teaching on Limbo, which was reaffirmed by Pope Saint Pius X as follows:

Children who die without being baptized go to limbo, where they don't enjoy God, but don't suffer either because whilst carrying the original sin...they don't deserve paradise but neither do they deserve hell or purgatory.

 

It is no wonder that those Catholics who care about the taking of preborn human life look to "politics" for their "solutions."

Accepting Crumbs and Lies Instead of Lifting High the Banner of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen

Thus it is that many thousands upon thousands of Catholics--and others--will applaud when President George Walker Bush, who supports the slicing and dicing of little babies in their mothers' womb in the so-called "hard" cases and whose administration funds the chemical assassinations of millions of children by means of domestic and international "family planning programs" and whose administration approved over-the-counter sales for the "Plan B" "Emergency Contraceptive to women over eighteen years of age while it has done nothing to reverse the marketing of the human pesticide RU-486, when they hear of the remarks he made in the East Room of the White House this morning to Miss Nellie Gray, the President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, and other key participants in the annual March for Life. This is the first time that President Bush actually met with leaders of the March for Life, having telephoned, usually form remote areas far away from Washington, D.C., Miss Gray at the beginning of the Rally on the Ellipse at noontime each January 22 during the previous seven years of his presidency. There was the time on January 22, 2004, when Bush was campaigning with the pro-abort Rudolph William Giuliani in New Mexico. Ah, yes the "pro-life" president, the man who saved his first personal appearance before March for Life Leaders until his eighth and final year of his term.

Quite predictably, Mr. Bush said how much "progress" has been made, touting the partial, conditional ban on partial-birth abortions (a ban that does nothing to save a single life; see: An Illusion of a Victory) and that he wants to work for the day "when every child will be welcomed in life and protected by law." This last assertion is so laughably illogical that it is amazing people still applaud Bush when he makes it. I mean, how can Bush say that he is working for the day "when every child will be welcomed in life and protected by law" when he believes that the civil law can permit the execution of preborn children as a matter of principle in certain "hard" cases? Ah, of course, logic is not the strong suit of the anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist, semi-Pelagian, naturalistic world of Modernity.

Mind you, I am not condemning the people who will make many sacrifices to travel to Washington, D.C. (where I used to go myself for many years on this day) and who are truly concerned about ending the genocide of the preborn. Not at all. I am merely pointing out with great sadness of heart how most, although not all, of those who will be participating in the March for Life today (a march that has become, in my view, much too celebratory over the last decade or so) still continue to look for naturalistic "solutions" from naturalists without realizing that the remote cause of all problems, whether personal or social, is Original Sin and that the proximate cause for our social problems today is Modernity's warfare against the Incarnation and thus against the Social Reign of Christ the King, a warfare that has been aided and abetted by conciliarism's warfare against the necessity of restoring Christendom as the foundation, although never an absolute guarantor, of course, of personal and social order.

His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan put the matter this way in the bulletin of Saint Gertrude the Great Church for the Octave of the Epiphany, Sunday, January 13, 2008:

I must confess that I am increasingly reluctant to be involved with anything that seems to encourage people actually to believe in, to put their hope in--or even to take seriously politics and politicians as the answer to our problems in society, as opposed to our true and only hope, Christ the King. The hour is late. What waste precious time and energy?

While it is always good to pray the Rosary, in public or in private, it is surely always bad to link it with our "bought and sold" politicians, ecumenical rallies, etc. Those who do these things are good, and act from the very best of motives. I believe, however, that all of this serves only to give legitimacy to dead end naturalist strategies, and to neutralize the good; feeding false hope, year after year, and distracting from true solutions.

I must say as well that it seems odd that having heard Heaven for 15 decades, at one of these Rosary Processions, we should hear representatives if not of hell, at least of the deceptive voices of the deceived in an ecumenical setting. I think I'll stick with the Rosary and the Blessed Sacrament.

Won't you plan to join us Tuesday afternoon and evening the 22nd of January for Masses, Rosaries, Holy Hours and Eucharistic Adoration? I know of no more powerful means to prevent abortions. Our business must be to make reparation through Mary's Immaculate Heart, to convert our land, not to participate in political parties and lies.

 

I could not agree more wholeheartedly with His Excellency, and this is coming from one who made himself unemployable as a college professor of political science because of my outspokenness against abortion--and against the way in which most of the conciliar "bishops" enabled Catholic pro-abortion politicians of both major political parties--and my having run for office three times on the New York State Right to Life Party line. The hour is indeed very late. This is a time not for celebratory rallies and parades, things that those in the echelons of political power tolerate on January 22 each year before returning to the "real" business (the economy, the "global war on terror," getting themselves re-elected) at hand. What has been gained by "dumbing down" the meaning of the term "pro-life" by casting votes cheaply for those who support abortion in at least some instances and who are not opposed at all to contraception and who campaign actively for totally pro-abortion candidates of their own political party? Nothing. Indeed, much has been lost.

It is my hope and prayer that those who read this site will spend time today on their knees before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament (if a chapel where He is truly present is reasonably nearby) and to pray all fifteen decades of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary. I realize that this may not be possible given the commitments and duties of one's state-in-life. One can, at the very least, send his Guardian Angel to pray for him in front of the Blessed Sacrament. And those who spend time commuting in their vehicles might be able to manage to pray all fifteen decades of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary on their way to and from work or school.

Each family should, however, find some time today to pray an extra set of mysteries of the Rosary if it is not possible to pray in reparation for abortion, both chemical and surgical, and for the conversion of those of who have had, performed, participated in or been supportive of abortion in any way, shape or form, remembering also to pray for the day that the United States of America will become the Catholic States of America. God will never "bless" a land that is responsible for the shedding of so much innocent blood under cover of law, a land that has spread, in the name of "civil and religious liberty," mind you, Protestant "churches" and Masonic "lodges" in formerly Catholic countries, taking many souls out of the true Church in the process, a country that has spread fashions and "entertainment" fare that have been responsible for the poisoning of so many souls

While it is important to continue to be a peaceful, prayerful presence in front of the abortuaries as we pray our Rosaries alongside our fellow traditional Catholics (we cannot participate in Catholic "ecumenical" events where the false "luminous mysteries" are prayed) and to do the work of sidewalk counseling for those who are so called, it is necessary first and foremost to build up the Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in our own souls, seeking to making reparation for our own many sins, especially those, if any, against the virtues of Chastity and Modesty, as the precondition for helping to plant a few seeds for the restoration for His Social Reign over us and our nations.

In addition to our daily Rosaries and the acts of reparation we make to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, who better to turn do in our efforts to restore the Faith in this time of barbarism in the world and apostasy and betrayal on the part of the Modernists than to our beloved Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful:

O Blessed Saint Joseph, tenderhearted father, faithful guardian of Jesus, chaste spouse of the Mother of God, we pray and beseech thee to offer to God the Father, His divine Son, bathed in blood on the cross for sinners, and through the thrice-holy Name of Jesus, obtain for us from the eternal Father the favor we implore.

Appease the Divine anger so justly inflamed by our crimes, beg of Jesus mercy for thy children. Amid the splendors of eternity, forget not the sorrows of those who suffer, those who pray, those who weep; stay the Almighty arm which smites us, that by thy prayers and those of thy most holy Spouse, the Heart of Jesus may be moved to pity and to pardon. Amen.

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saints Vincent and Anastasius, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints