To Advocate Christ the King, Nothing Else
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Those who are familiar with my writing and who may have attended my lecture programs during those long bygone years when what the ancients would call "audiences" actually filled rooms to capacity know that, despite my sins and failings and mistakes, I have tried to be an advocate in behalf of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen. This has not earned me any friends in the Sisyphus-like world of partisan politics and political commentary, Indeed, I am quite shunned by "conservatives" and "libertarians" for my uncompromising commitment in behalf of Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order. It has not been the path to career security in my years as a college professor. Alas, I do hope and pray that this defense of the Social Reign of Christ the King has helped to pay back at least a smidgen of what I owe God for my many terrible sins as I seek to offer up this poor work to Him through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The defense of the Social Reign of Christ the King, a doctrine that is rejected in its entirety by the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, including, of course, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, is not something that carries an "expiration date" according to the false, philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" that has been dissected numerous times on this site. Pope Pius XI explained in this first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, that it is ever to be our duty to do so:
Many believe in or claim that they believe in and
hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority,
the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital
and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between
Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the
different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of
the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the
Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator,
Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of
these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it
were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain
still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may
be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those
written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.
There is a species of moral, legal, and
social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn
theological modernism.
It is necessary ever to keep in mind these
teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary
to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of
Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct
understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly
important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the
priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live
they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro,
and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men,
by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians
iv, 14) (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
No one on the face of this earth has any right to "dissent" from this nation. The Social Reign of Christ the King, which has been explicated by numerous popes as it came under attack from the anti-Incarnational forces of Modernity, starting with the Protestant Revolution in 1517 and about a century and one-half with the inevitable rise of a whole host of naturalistic "philosophies" and ideologies enshrining "Man" to be ruler over all. The appendix below contains but a brief recitation of papal quotations that have been used in numerous articles on this site, included as a means of helping newer readers to this site understand that nationalistic myths of "American exceptionalism" as the means to a "better world" in which we are so steeped from childhood are false, that Catholicism is indeed the one and only foundation of personal and social order.
Catholicism is not a panacea for personal and social order. Each us of is wounded by the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin and and our own Actual Sins. The Middle Ages of Christendom was marked with various episodes of wars among Catholic kingdoms and even against popes themselves, including Pope Celestine V, whose feast day we celebrate tomorrow, May 19, 2012. The fact that individual Catholics fail to cooperate with the graces won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Christ the King, Our Divine Redeemer, and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, is to the discredit of individual Catholics who added to social disorder by means of their sins, not to the discredit of the Faith or any of Its immutable doctrines, including the Social Reign of Christ the King.
Pope Pius XII made this point in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939:
It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through
identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free
from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps
they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of
settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the
just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by
restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable
settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from
the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis
which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)
The errors of pluralism divide
people needlessly into warring camps as a permanently-established
political class, composed of competing sets of naturalists, each of
which believes that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother
by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation is, at best, a
matter of complete indifference to personal and social order. So many
Americans live from election to election, always believing that
"change," whether it be in the direction of "progress" for naturalists
of the "left" or in the direction of "constitutionalism" or "liberty" or
"limited government" for naturalists of the "right." Although divisions
on some matters will always occur until the General Judgment of the
Living and the Dead on the Last Day at the Second Coming of Our Blessed
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it is also true that men today have been
needlessly divided about matters pertaining to First and Last Things,
oblivious to the fact that they have been given a spotless mother, Holy
Mother Church, to serve as their mater and magister (mother and teacher) in this passing, mortal vale of tears. Most men
today believe that they are automatons, either independent of any
concept of God or "free" from the "dictates" of a hierarchical church.
Personal and social disaster cannot but be the result
of such a brew of error. Men resort more and more to violence today
because they do not know of the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart
of Jesus. They do not know that they have a Blessed Mother who made
possible their salvation by her perfect fiat to the will of God the
father at the Annunciation. They do not realize that the supernatural
helps they need to overcome all sin in their lives and to pray for the
conversion of those who are promoting evil in society flow through the
loving hands of that same Blessed Mother, who gave the Rosary with her
own blessed hands to Saint Dominic de Guzman so that we could be more
closely united to her Divine Son, Christ the King, through the mysteries
contained in her psalter, the Rosary.
Most men today do not realize that there is nothing
that any of us can suffer, whether personally or socially, that is equal
of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer in His
Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross and that caused those
Seven Swords to be thrust through and through the Sorrowful and
Immaculate Heart of Mary. They tend, therefore, to dwell on their own
pain, whether real or imagined, and to stew in their own juices as they
conjure up hatred for their fellow human beings, each of whom is made in
the image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity and for whose
salvation we must pray fervently as one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy.
Living in a world that has been deprived of a
superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces as a result of the
barren liturgical rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, most
men today are "catechized" by television or the internet or what passes
for "entertainment" in popular culture. They are tossed about from one
thing to another without having any clear, coherent understanding of
they identity as redeemed creatures and that each of us will have to
make an accounting of our lives at the moment of our Particular
Judgments. Men who lack the Catholic Faith, you see, must descend more
and more into a coarseness of life and culture that produces a class of
neo-barbarians who are not only at the gates but who are well inside of the fort of the city.
As been noted exhaustively on this site and for more
than a decade before that in printed journals (and for decades in my
college classrooms), the descent into neo-barbarism just did not happen
suddenly. It has been gradual, almost imperceptible at times. Having
ridden the shock waves of the Protestant Revolution, which was a violent
and very blood revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself
instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church as
they order their own lives and the laws of their nations in accord with
His Deposit of Faith, men descended by steps into theological
relativism, religious indifferentism and the worldliness that feeds on a
ethos of naturalism and an unbridled licentiousness that passes for
what libertarians tell us is "civil liberty."
The libertarian concept of "civil liberty" as the
antidote to the totalitarian monster state of the "left" is in and of
itself a perversion the true gift of liberty that Our Lord has won for
us on the wood of the Holy Cross, freedom from enslavement to Original
Sin and the eternal death of the soul if we use our free will to follow
Him through His true Church. No one has a "civil right" to sin or to
promote sin under cover of the civil law and throughout what passes for
popular culture. Men who live in such a flood errors and lies become,
whether or not they realize it (and most do not), living poster children
of semi-Pelagianism, the heresy that contends men can more or less stir
up graces within their own souls to be good and virtuous and thus to
save themselves and their societies.
Souls that are not immersed in the supernatural truths of the true Faith, lifting their minds and hearts to the Most Blessed Trinity through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, will be captives of the devil and his falsehoods to a greater or lesser extent, seeking to blame those who have different skin colors or ethnic or national origins as the "cause" of their own personal problems and of many, if not all, of the problems extant in society-at-large. Such poor people believe that the "solution" to the injustices, whether real and imagined, is to "advocate" in behalf of "their" own and/or own to claim that "their" race or "their" ethnicity or "their" nationality is superior to all others. Some of these unfortunate human beings plot violence against those they blame for their problems. Others think that they can hold "conferences" to "discuss" how to "promote" a defense of "their" rights in civil society.
Christophobic organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center believe that among the greatest "threats" to adherents of the blasphemous Talmud are what its leaders and writers refer to as "radical traditional Catholics," that it is, those of who hold to the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church that Judaism is a dead, superseded religion that has the power to save no one and that has been used by the devil as a means of promoting incessant warfare against the Social Reign of Christ the King and thus against the very foundation of all social order.
The Christophobic zealots of the Southern Poverty Law Center go so far as to lump "radical traditional Catholics" as being fellow travelers with various "white nationalist," "white advocacy" and truly anti-Semitic organizations when the actual truth is that a believing Catholic rejects all forms of racialism and racial "advocacy" as he understands that every human being is made in the very image and likeness of the Mot Blessed Trinity and has an immortal soul that has been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Christ the King. We are to see His very image in every human being, no matter their skin color or ethnicity or nationality, and to treat them in the exact same manner as we would treat Our Lord Himself in the very Flesh.
Unfortunately, some of naturalists who are steeped in various forms of "racialism," including President Barack Hussein Obama, First Lady Michele Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder (see Memo to Eric Holder: There Is No Affirmative Action Program In Heaven), believe that there first and foremost responsibility in life is to "protect their own" without realizing the following words of Saint Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to the Colossians mean precisely what they say:
[6] For which things the wrath of God cometh upon the children of unbelief, [7] In which you also walked some time, when you lived in them. [8] But now put you also all away: anger, indignation, malice, blasphemy, filthy speech out of your mouth. [9] Lie not one to another: stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, [10] And putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him.
[11] Where
there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision,
Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all, and in all.[12] Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience: [13] Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a
complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you
also. [14] But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection: [15] And let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body: and be ye thankful.
[16] Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching
and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles,
singing in grace in your hearts to God. [17] All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. (Colossians 3: 6-17.)
Supposing that anyone who has been included by the Southern Poverty Law Center as heading a "hate group," a man representing a conference on "white advocacy" wrote to me last month to invite me to speak at a conference in Indiana. This is what I wrote to him by way of response as I rejected the invitation out of hand:
I must reject without equivocation your invitation.
Please note that I am not interested in any further invitations.
Please note also these words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937, that I append below.
The Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, as It is lifted
high by His Catholic Church unites men of all races as they strive for
personal sanctity as the consecrated slaves of Our King through the
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Sincerely yours in Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen,
Thomas A. Droleskey, Ph.D.
Publisher-Editor
www.Christorchaos.com
Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State,
or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any
other fundamental value of the human community -- however necessary and
honorable be their function in worldly things -- whoever raises these
notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous
level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created
by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of
life which that faith upholds.
Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse,
in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a
meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less
arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful,
that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal
God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of
Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of
all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the
world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.
This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued
commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and
race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither
privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned,
rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the
Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be
obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience
permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony
with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing
laws of man into the immutable laws of God.
None but superficial minds could stumble into
concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock
within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a
single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of
all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket"
(Isaiah xI, 15). (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)
As Catholics, my friends, we know that God does not judge us on the basis of the race or ethnicity. Our immortal souls is made unto His own very image and likeness in that we have a rational soul with an intellect to know Him and a will to choose with which to love and to serve Him. Human beings do not love God as "blacks" or as "whites" or as "Latinos or Latinas" or as "Orientals" or as "Native Americans" or as "Italians" or as "Croatians" or as "French" or as "Americans" but as creatures whose immortal souls have been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Human beings are called upon to love God as He has revealed Himself to them through His true Church, the Catholic Church, and to love their own immortal souls as they have been redeemed at so great a cost. Our principal identity as human beings is as members of the Catholic Church. Everything else about us (race, ethnicity, nationality, gender), although occurring certainly within the Providence of God, is secondary.
As I tried to explain to students during my days as a college professor, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ embraced all of the legitimate joys and sorrows of this passing, mortal vale of tears as He underwent His fearful Passion and Death. We suffer or experience joy as human beings, as redeemed creatures, not as mere animals identifiable by external characteristics. There are no such things as "black" tears or "white" tears or "Indian" tears. There is no such thing as "white" joy or "black" joy" or "Latino" joy. The use of the "race" or "ethnicity" or "gender" card is the refuge of cowardly scoundrels who seek privilege and/or to indemnify slothful or corrupt behavior.
We are to see in each person the very impress of the Divine Redeemer and to treat Him accordingly, rendering unto each person that which is his due. We are to discriminate unjustly (we must discriminate justly in many circumstances of our lives as we choose which merchant to patronize, which person to employ, who to admit to a seat in a college or a professional school, to deny employment or privileges to those steeped in public scandal, etc.) against no one nor must we use the external characteristics of a human being to extend privileges that are undeserving and/or would result in an injustice to someone else.
Human beings are supposed to be bound together by the common bonds of the Catholic Faith, not to break into warring tribes along ethnic or racial or geographic lines, seething with hatred and resentment at those who have "more" (power, money, fame, prestige, accomplishment) than they do. We are to help each other get home to Heaven as members of the Catholic Church who aspire to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our sins, fulfilling these words of Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians as we seek to build up each other as members of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth:
[16] From
whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what
every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of
every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in
charity. This then I say and testify in the Lord: That henceforward you walk not as also the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, [18] Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of
God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of
their hearts. [19] Who despairing, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the
working of all uncleanness, unto the working of all uncleanness, unto
covetousness. [20] But you have not so learned Christ;
[21] If so be that you have heard him, and have been taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus: [22] To put off, according to former conversation, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error. [23] And be renewed in the spirit of your mind: [24] And put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth. [25] Wherefore putting away lying, speak; ye the truth every man with his neighbour; for we are members one of another.
[26] Be angry, and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. [27] Give not place to the devil. [28] He that stole, let him now steal no more; but rather let him labour,
working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have
something to give to him that suffereth need. [29] Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth; but that which is good, to
the edification of faith, that it may administer grace to the hearers. [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God: whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.
[31] Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation, and clamour, and blasphemy, be put away from you, with all malice. [32] And be ye kind one to another; merciful, forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you in Christ. (Ephesians 4: 16-32.)
We are to be bound together by the common bonds of the Catholic Faith. We advocate Christ the King, nothing else. Christ the King, nothing else.
Yet it is that those steeped in the anti-Incarnational lies of Modernity, including any and all variations of the naturalistic myths of Judeo-Masonry, have prepared the way for the demographic annihilation of their own by defying the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted solely to the Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. The practice of contraception and of even "natural" forms of "family limitation" and the widespread use of surgical methods of killing innocent preborn babies in the "civilized" West has placed the indigenous populations of the formerly Catholic countries of Europe on an irreversible path to extinction. This self-annihilation has already change the demographics and hence the politics and the laws and the culture of such countries as France and Germany and England. Various "nationalist" groups have arisen in European countries to "defend" these indigenous populations when the truth is that Europeans, having rejected the true Faith entirely, including the corrupted version advanced by the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church that is the conciliar church, have brought this on themselves, thus making inevitable, barring a miraculous intervention by God Himself, there.
The "civilized" United States of America is suffering from the same phenomenon. It is now the case that the births of "non-white" babies has overtaken those of "white" babies (see Non-white births outnumber white births for the first time in US). Many of those who have devoted their lives to "white advocacy" are directly responsible for this as they have practiced contraception with ready abandon while not an insignificant number, believing in the lies of libertarianism (see Showing Libertarianism's True Biases), have killed off their babies surgically when it has been convenient for them to do so. Sin has consequences. Live by the lies of Modernity, my good readers, and you will die by the lies of Modernity.
Although it is surely the case that some of the demographic changes have occurred because of a wave of illegal immigration, which has not been stemmed, despite a lot of bluff and bluster, by presidential administrations and Congresses no matter which organized crime family of naturalism (whether Republicans or Democrats) has been in control, has and will continue to change the outcomes of the farces that are elections in our Judeo-Masonic electoral system, those who are bemoaning the decline of white births should consider the simple fact that all manner of changes in demographics took place in Europe as a result of wars and invasions even in the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church had a simple solution to this: to fulfill the very command that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ gave to the Apostles before He Ascended to the Father's right hand on Ascension Thursday, forty days after His Resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday, to make disciples of all men and all nations.
Alas, the lords of the counterfeit church of concilairism, having embraced the lies of religious pluralism and eschewing the necessity of seeking with urgency the unconditional conversion of all non-Catholics to the maternal bosom of Holy Mother Church of which they believe themselves to belong, are content to leave new immigrants to the United States of America in the lies of whatever religion they find themselves, believing that the answer to stem the flood of Latin American and other Spanish-speaking immigrants out of their church buildings into the arms of Protestant sects of one kind or another is to give them ever more "lively" versions of the Protestant and Novus Ordo liturgical service. Those Spanish-speaking immigrants and their families who are attached to the conciliar structures are brainwashed into becoming ready tools of the organized crime family of the naturalist "left," composed of statists and social engineers who desire to "colonize" and enslave them just as they have done with black Americans in order to make their wards of the state.
This is tragic as most of those who come to this country, whether legally or illegally, work much harder than many native-born Americans. They take the jobs that no one else wants to take. They work long hours, sometimes working two or three jobs. Although some have certainly become corrupted by American materialism in the same manner as occurred with Catholic immigrants from Europe in the Nineteenth Century, those who have immigrated here to the United States of America from Latin American countries have, even though most of them do not realize it, a mission from Our Lady of Guadalupe to convert the Americas to Catholicism.
Just as Our Lady sought out new members for Holy Mother Church in Mexico
after the loss of around nine million of her children in Europe in the
immediate aftermath of the Protestant Revolutions, replacing those lost
to the Faith in Europe almost person for person in Mexico and elsewhere
in the Americas within a short time of her apparitions to Juan Diego, I
believe that Our Lady means to use the hard working people from
Mexico elsewhere in the Americas to help convert a land that is steeped in one
error after another. Our Lady still loves the Americas, and I believe
that she wants to use the people from Mexico and other parts of Latin America to be a means convert this
land to the true Faith. It matters not to God whether the majority of
people in this country are "white" or "brown" or "black" or turquoise.
What matters if that whoever is here practices the Holy Faith and seeks,
despite their own sins and failings, to know, love, and serve Him as He
has revealed Himself to us through His true Church.
Mind you, I am not endorsing illegal immigration. Far from it. Those not familiar with the work of this site in the past should read two articles of mine from two years ago now, Good Catholic Common Sense Must Prevail, part 1 and Good Catholic Common Sense Must Prevail, part 2, that dealt with the issue of illegal immigration as I believe that I a Catholic should do, admitting that my arguments in this matter are but a very noninfallible effort to apply right principles to bear on these matter. My application of those principles certainly is a matter of criticism and debate, something that is noted near the end of part two of that tow-part series. All well and good.
It is, however, nevertheless true that it is impossible to deport over eleven million illegal residents, acknowledging that those who have come here to commit violent crimes and/or who have committed such crimes after arriving here can and should be deported. What the warning factions within what is called the "traditional movement" should do to seek to convert those who are here and to convince them to become the champions of Christ the King, He who knows no bounds of race or gender or ethnicity or nationality. A change in demographics in a country need not be a cause for doomsday prophesying. It must be seen as the means to win new disciples to Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Queen.
The conversion of our own beloved nation depends in no small measure on
our own daily conversion away sin as we seek to grow in holiness with
every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Every Rosary we pray helps to plant the seeds for the Triumph of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary and thus the restoration of Christendom in the
world and of the Church Militant on the face of this earth. Never
underestimate the power of our simple prayers and the simple
performance of our daily duties as members of the Mystical Body of Our
Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to plant seeds whose flowering may
not occur until many years after we have died and have faced our
Particular Judgment.
May Our Lady help us to be led out of the prison of our own sins and selfishness and the lies of Modernity and Modernism as we are enlightened at all times by the Light Who is her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, King of men and their nations. May the day come soon when He is recognized by the Constitution of the United States of America as the King of this nation as He is of all nations.
We must advocate Christ the King, nothing else!
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, 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.
Saint Venantius, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
Appendix
Our True Popes on the Social Reign of Christ the King
Nor can We predict happier times for religion
and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to
separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord
between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain
that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the
sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty.
(Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
But, although we have not omitted often to
proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of
the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God,
and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that
we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil
opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain.
Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be
detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary
influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church,
according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should
freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not
only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their
sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship
and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved
itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.
For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying
to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as
they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public
society and (also) civil progress altogether require
that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to
religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any
distinction being made between the true religion and false ones."
And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy
Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition
of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the
civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the
Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From
which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to
foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic
Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory
XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is
each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and
asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides
in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no
authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able
openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever,
either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way."
But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that
they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments
are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be
wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing
speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our
Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid
this most injurious babbling." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
As a consequence, the State, constituted as
it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties
linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature
and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in
holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from
Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men
living together in society are under the power of God no less than
individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude
to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous
goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is
allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty
of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and
practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the
religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show
to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as
though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have
care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no
practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one
which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship
God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule,
therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their
chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it
under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor
enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden
duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we
destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and
fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the
attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon
this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of
this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence,
civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only
safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the
interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to
hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession
of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek.
Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve
unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link
connecting man with God.
Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is
the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased
mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the
fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread
of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming
obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it
is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus
Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to
propagate. . . . To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the
business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth,
from domestic society is a grave and fatal error(Pope Leo XII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
There are others, somewhat more moderate though not more
consistent, who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided
by the divine law, but not the morality of the State, for that in public
affairs the commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely
disregarded in the framing of laws. Hence follows the fatal theory of
the need of separation between Church and State. But the absurdity of
such a position is manifest. Nature herself proclaims the
necessity of the State providing means and opportunities whereby the
community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say, according to
the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness and
justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no
attention to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enactments.
Besides, those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only
to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but
still more to consult the welfare of men's souls in the wisdom of their
legislation. But, for the increase of such benefits, nothing more
suitable can be conceived than the laws which have God for their author;
and, therefore, they who in their government of the State take no
account of these laws abuse political power by causing it to deviate
from its proper end and from what nature itself prescribes. And, what is
still more important, and what We have more than once pointed out,
although the civil authority has not the same proximate end as the
spiritual, nor proceeds on the same lines, nevertheless in the exercise
of their separate powers they must occasionally meet. For their subjects
are the same, and not infrequently they deal with the same objects,
though in different ways. Whenever this occurs, since a state of
conflict is absurd and manifestly repugnant to the most wise ordinance
of God, there must necessarily exist some order or mode of procedure to
remove the occasions of difference and contention, and to secure harmony
in all things. This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which
exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and
the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the
body, since it extinguishes its very life (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, June 20, 1888.)
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. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
Just as Christianity cannot
penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter
into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who
governs all, Who is infinitely wise, good, and just, the idea of duty
seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms
hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and
that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism
disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after
the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days,
it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back
to order the states and peoples of modern times. But the return
of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not
restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It
identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order,
sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which
has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of
the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the
daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel,
and has defended it at the price of its blood, and strong in the Divine
assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, it
makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which It
has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost
limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its
inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of
the Gospel It does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer
of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and
charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and
of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the
doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and
marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The
equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the
different social classes It keeps them intact, as nature itself
demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from
Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in
no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are
superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the
rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of
mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they
are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error.
Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any
religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to
God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and
preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him,
therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to
honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the
supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of
public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate
object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on
the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is
man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its
course. But as the present order of things is temporary and
subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it
follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way
of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same
thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the
world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies.
Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each
exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows
necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in
which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the
agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from
these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become
acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the
truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this
thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either
prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is
the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching
the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never
ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of
the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo
XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic
teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two
societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a
suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing
between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata
colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito
comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds:
"Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did
not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it
were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the
Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the
active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young,
the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non
possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut
curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere....
Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a
legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus
et perniciousus est error." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
But it is not only within her own household that
the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within,
she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy
the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with
which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and
duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be
determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit,
which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be
applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for
science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon
the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same
way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the
diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of
the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while
that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate
the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed,
conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such,
because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted
immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this
doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The
state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic
from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a
citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the
way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the
Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders
-- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and
prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever,
is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to
protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from
which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our
predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws
governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they
operate, the human person is lead, not toward progress, but towards
death. This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society;
they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they
dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to
proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles
upon which the present Christian City rests.
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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
Let the Princes and Rulers of peoples remember this truth, and
let them consider whether it is a prudent and safe idea for governments
or for states to separate themselves from the holy religion of Jesus
Christ, from which their authority receives such strength and support.
Let them consider again and again, whether it is a measure of political
wisdom to seek to divorce the teaching of the Gospel and of the Church
from the ruling of a country and from the public education of the young.
Sad experience proves that human authority fails where religion is set
aside. The fate of our first parent after the Fall is wont to
come also upon nations. As in his case, no sooner had his will turned
from God than his unchained passions rejected the sway of the will; so,
too, when the rulers of nations despise divine authority, in their turn
the people are wont to despise their human authority. There remains, of
course, the expedient of using force to repress popular risings; but
what is the result? Force can repress the body, but it cannot repress
the souls of men. (Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, November 1, 1914.)
When, therefore, governments and nations follow in
all their activities, whether they be national or international, the
dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example
of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual,
then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the
peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow
out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An
attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its
results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as
they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously
and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human
institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of
international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the
Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations,
Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was
often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which
one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those
who had lost their way back to the safe road.
There exists an institution able to safeguard the
sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every
nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the
highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such
an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this
great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind,
but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she
possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige,
which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the
close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others
assuredly will fail. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung
from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men.
Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet
confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew
to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory
zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of
passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of
construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was
out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii.
8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his
designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will
according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the
Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the
foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God,
spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude
toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this
gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic
world.
In your country, Venerable Brethren, voices
are swelling into a chorus urging people to leave the Church, and among
the leaders there is more than one whose official position is intended
to create the impression that this infidelity to Christ the King
constitutes a signal and meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State.
Secret and open measures of intimidation, the threat of economic and
civic disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain classes of Catholic
functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right and dignity.
Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay so
dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the
highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss,
there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor
offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of
every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: "Begone, Satan! For it is
written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou
serve" (Matt. iv. 10). And turning to the Church, he shall say: "Thou,
my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my
death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly
promises or threats, I betray the vows of my baptism." As to those who
imagine that they can reconcile exterior infidelity to one and the same
Church, let them hear Our Lord's warning: -- "He that shall deny me
before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke xii. 9).(Pope
Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)
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