Trying To Guess What Should Be Presumed
by Thomas A. Droleskey
The world just goes to pieces whenever it is within God's Holy Providence for me to be off-line for the better part of a week or so. (You do know, of course, that my tongue is indeed plainly firmly within my cheek.)
Since my last article, L'Osservatore Occulto, was published on Friday, July 17, 2009, I have received more e-mails accusing me of not being a sedevacantist (one man wrote that this is "so" because the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was not a bishop and thus could not have ordained anyone to the priesthood, including "The Nine," an assertion that was refuted quite definitively in Cracks in the Masonry by the late Dr. Rama
Coomaraswamy). A third party has sent me unsolicited e-mails concerning an exchange between two sets of allegedly "traditional" Catholics that have included such charitable phrases and characterizations as "moron" and "moronic blindness" and "evil" and "liar." Yet other e-mails have been sent trying to goad me into making public comments on various matters that are not for public consumption and discussion. It's crazy out there, folks. Crazy.
Things are equally crazy in the insane, moronic, if I may borrow a phrase, thank you very much, world of civil governance under the inglorious reign of Caesar Obamus, also known as Barry Soetero, although he is better known as Barack Hussein Obama.
President Obama has nominated yet another Catholic to serve in his administration to join the likes of pro-aborts such as Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
The newest Catholic to be nominated by the thoroughly pro-abortion Barack Hussein Obama, who was received so warmly by the false "pontiff," Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, at the Apostolic Palace on Friday, July 10, 2009 (see A "Blessing" on a Murderer and His Work), who is using his nationalization of the health-care industry (to accompany the nationalization of major portions of the the automobile and banking industries) to back-door provisions of the so-called Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which will be the subject of the next article on this site, is a Dr. Regina Benjamin, who has been nominated by Caesar Obamus to serve as the Surgeon-General of the United States of America.
It is unknown at this point whether Dr. Benjamin shares Obama's support for the destruction of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs by chemical and/or surgical means. The fact that we have to "guess" as to Dr. Benjamin's "position" on the direct, intentional taking of innocent preborn human babies in their mothers' wombs should tell us something very significant about the state of apostasy and betrayal facing us as a result of the conciliar revolutions against the Faith. Catholics are supposed of one mind on matters of Faith and Morals. Pope Leo XIII made this point very clear in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896:
Agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect concord amongst men, from which concurrence of wills and similarity of action are the natural results. Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful - "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. iv., 5). That is, as there is one Lord and one baptism, so should all Christians, without exception, have but one faith. And so the Apostle St. Paul not merely begs, but entreats and implores Christians to be all of the same mind, and to avoid difference of opinions: "I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms amongst you, and that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment" (I Cor. i., 10). Such passages certainly need no interpreter; they speak clearly enough for themselves. Besides, all who profess Christianity allow that there can be but one faith. It is of the greatest importance and indeed of absolute necessity, as to which many are deceived, that the nature and character of this unity should be recognized. And, as We have already stated, this is not to be ascertained by conjecture, but by the certain knowledge of what was done; that is by seeking for and ascertaining what kind of unity in faith has been commanded by Jesus Christ.
There should be no "guess work" involved as to whether a Baptized Catholic supports the absolute inviolability of innocent preborn human life. Indeed, there should be no need for any organization called "Priests for Life." Shouldn't every man who believes himself to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood, whether legitimately or illegitimately, be of one mind and one heart with the Divine Redeemer, Who teaches us through His true Church that there is never any legitimate reason to undertake any action that attacks directly an innocent human life at any moment from conception until the name of natural death? Why is there a need for any organization called "Priests for Life"?
As we know, most sadly, "agreement and union of minds" among Catholics attached to the counterfeit church of concilairism is not necessary for one to remain in "good standing" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. The following is just a partial list of Catholics who remain in "good standing" in the conciliar structures despite supporting the mystical dismemberment of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of innocent preborn human babies:
Edward Moore Kennedy, David Paterson, George Elmer Pataki, Mario Matthew Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo, Rudolph William Giuliani, Charles Rangel (who is also a Freemason!), Rick Lazio, Susan Molinari, Susan Collins, Richard Durbin, Thomas Harkin, Jennifer Granholm, Patricia Murray, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mary Landrieu, Tom Ridge, James Florio, James McGreevey, Robert Menendez, Barbara Mikulski, John F. Kerry, Patrick Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (see
As Incoherent as the Founding Itself), Loretta Sanchez Brixey, Linda Sanchez, Gray Davis, Carolyn McCarthy, and Thomas Foley, among so many others, including the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the late Thomas P. O'Neill and the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America William Brennan (who was buried with a full conciliar "Mass of Christian Burial" despite his casting one of the seven votes in favor of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton; Moynihan and O'Neill also were buried as "Catholics" in "good standing"--as will Edward Moore Kennedy when he dies.
Is Dr. Regina Benjamin "pro-life"? To even have to ask this question is to provide a correlative proof of the state of apostasy that permeates the entirety of the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. How can one spend her entire professional life in the field of contemporary medicine without her position on the taking of innocent preborn human life being known?
Alas, conciliarism's respect for errors and falsehoods, whether theological or philosophical or medical or scientific, is such that there are many "pastors" of souls in the conciliar structures who do not care whether their own parishioners support baby-killing, whether by surgical or chemical means, under cover of law. There are many "pastors" of souls in the conciliar structures who do not care whether their own parishioners support civil "rights" for those engaged in unrepentant, perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. Some of those who support these evils are lectors and "extraordinary ministers" and other "leaders" in formerly Catholic parishes that are currently in conciliar captivity.
Most of these these "pastors" of souls in the conciliar structures do not care whether their own parishioners dissent from articles contained in the Deposit of Faith. Indeed, many of these "pastors" of souls in the structures of a false religion, conciliarism, are themselves dissenters from articles contained in the Deposit of Faith. Some have even counseled women to follow their "consciences" to kill their preborn babies. Others use the same canard of "following one's conscience" to practice contraception. What should be presumed, that is, absolute adherence to every article contained in the Deposit of Faith, of alleged "pastors" of souls in the conciliar structures has become a matter of guess work for those Catholics who have not as of yet come to realize that conciliarism is a false religion that is an ape of Catholicism but is not in fact the true Faith at all (see
Bookended From Birth to Birth).
It is thus par for the conciliar course, therefore, that Dr. Regina Benjamin's position on the inviolability of all innocent preborn human life has become a matter of guess work worthy of such fictional detectives as Perry Mason and Robert T. Ironside. Here are parts of two news reports that attempt to provide "answers" to what should be presumed of Dr. Benjamin as a Baptized Catholic, that is, absolute adherence to everything taught by the Catholic Church concerning Faith and Morals without any dissent whatsoever:
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Plaudits for Dr. Regina Benjamin from an archbishop and colleagues and even her receipt of a pontifical medal may not be persuasive enough evidence of her credentials as a Catholic who supports church teaching for critics questioning whether she would become an advocate for legal abortion if she is confirmed as surgeon general.
President Barack Obama nominated Benjamin, 52, a physician from Alabama, to be surgeon general July 13.
An active parishioner of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile, Ala., Benjamin was lauded by retired Archbishop Oscar H. Lipscomb of Mobile, who nominated her for the papal honor, the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross, in 2006.
Archbishop Lipscomb told Catholic News Service July 14 he was delighted with her nomination, saying, "She is a person who has a great sense of responsibility and is authentic in her Catholicism."
Others, including the head of the Catholic Health Association, on whose board Benjamin serves, and the rector of the Mobile cathedral, praised her nomination and described her in terms of her strong Catholic faith.
But a comment from a White House spokesman that Benjamin "supports the president's position on reproductive health issues" and a 13-year-old article about a policy approved by the American Medical Association on medical school curriculum were seen by some abortion opponents as evidence that Benjamin is "pro-abortion."
A July 14 article by McClatchy newspapers cited the comment by White House spokesman Reid Cherlin to support what it called "her lesser-known support for abortion rights (that) puts her at odds with her church and some of the groups that have praised her work."
The balance of Cherlin's comment, provided to CNS by the White House, was:
"Like (Obama) she believes that this is an issue where it is important to try and seek common ground and come together to try and reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. As a physician, she is deeply committed to the philosophy of putting her patients' needs first when it comes to providing care."
The McClatchy story, published in the Miami Herald newspaper, noted that the clinic Benjamin runs in rural Alabama does not perform abortions, quoting a clinic employee who said patients seeking information about abortions would be referred elsewhere.
Beyond her remarks at the announcement of her nomination, Benjamin has not made any statement, which is standard practice for presidential nominees before their Senate confirmation hearings.
Several pro-life blogs raising warnings about Benjamin have referenced the McClatchy article and another by The Associated Press in 1996 in which Benjamin was quoted commenting about a nonbinding policy urging medical schools to teach about some of the ramifications of abortion.
The AP article primarily discussed the AMA's decision to hold off on taking a stand on whether the procedure known as partial-birth abortion should be banned.
The pertinent section, near the tail end of the article about the December 1996 AMA meeting, said:
"The AMA voted to urge medical schools to expand their curriculum on abortion.
"Medical students now learn about abortion, but the AMA said budding doctors should learn more than just the ethics of it. Other issues are equally as important, such as counseling and possible complications.
"'We are adopting a policy that medical school curriculum provide the legal, ethical and psychological principles associated with abortion so students can learn all the factors involved,' said Regina Benjamin, an Alabama family doctor."
The McClatchy article also pointed to Benjamin's former position as a board member for the group, Physicians for Human Rights, which it said "has advocated access to safe abortions in its investigation of human rights conditions in some countries."
The Web site of Physicians for Human Rights said it was founded in 1986 to use the skills and background of health professionals to "investigate the health consequences of human rights violations and work to stop them." It was the co-recipient in 1997 of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Benjamin was a board member from 1996 to 2002. The Web site lists activities including investigations on human rights in professional medical practice, and human rights in armed conflict dealing with chemical weapons, war crimes, land mines and forensics.
The physicians' group's Web site does refer to abortion in various contexts. For example, a 2005 case study of health services for women in crisis in Swaziland talks about the country's abortion laws and practices. Other reports discuss the problem of coerced abortion in some countries.
The McClatchy article quoted another member of the board at Physicians for Human Rights as saying abortion was never a focus of Benjamin's advocacy work.
The group's global health campaign deals with issues including policy advocacy for combating HIV/AIDS, strengthening health systems, and improving maternal health. Recent press releases from the organization called for investigations into the war-related deaths of prisoners in Afghanistan, and urged support for AIDS reduction initiatives and for an end to an immigration ban on people who are infected with HIV.
In light of suggestions Benjamin would be an advocate for legal abortion, Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, followed up her earlier statement supporting Benjamin's nomination.
"We have an outstanding woman with a great heart for the dignity of people at all stages of life who has been active in her church and recognized by her local archbishop," said Sister Keehan, a Daughter of Charity. "Her public and private statements on the dignity of life have always been consistent with church teaching."
The post of surgeon general, which is a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the Public Health Service and is described officially as "America's chief health educator ... providing Americans the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury."
The current priorities for the office listed by the acting surgeon general, Rear Adm. Stephen K. Galsom, include disease prevention, eliminating health disparities, public health preparedness and improving health literacy. (Praise for Alabama doctor followed by speculation about abortion view)
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- More confirmation is coming in that Regina Benjamin, the Alabama physician President Barack Obama selected to be his Surgeon General, backs abortion. But, no one may know her position for certain because Obama officials say she won't comment until after she is confirmed.
Last Monday, LifeNews.com was the first media outlet to report on Benjamin's abortion position.
The news story highlighted how she backed an American Medical Association proposal for future doctors to get more abortion education -- which the AMA later admitted was a position calling for actual training in doing abortions.
Then, the White House confirmed that Benjamin's views on "reproductive health," typically a code word for abortion, mirror Obama's pro-abortion views.
Now, the Washington Post, in a weekend story, is reporting that the White House won't follow up on its original comments and confirm that Benjamin backs abortion, but the newspaper makes it appear off-the-record sources confirm it.
"The White House declined to say whether Benjamin supports a woman's right to an abortion, but sources close to her selection say she does," the Post reported Saturday.
While the evidence is mounting that Benjamin does support legalized abortions, the public, and members of the Senate who will vote to confirm her, may not know until she answers the question during her hearings or after she is confirmed.
Rebecca Adelman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, has said that Benjamin can't answer the question until after her confirmation and is prohibited from speaking publicly.
Meanwhile, a debate is brewing about the Surgeon General's role in the abortion divide.
David Satcher, a former surgeon general under President Bill Clinton, suggests that the top doctor's view on abortion isn't important and doesn't matter.
"We all have our religions, but when you speak as the surgeon general to the American people, it's not about your religion," he told the Post. "I don't see why the surgeon general has to get involved in a discussion about abortion."
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council has an answer.
"While that sounds nice and polite, it implies that in order to serve in a public capacity you have to check the guiding tenets of your faith at the door," he said. "Of course, those who divorce their espoused moral convictions from public service are really only kidding themselves: We act in accordance with what we truly believe. Setting aside one's faith and the moral convictions that flow from it only demonstrates how relatively unimportant that faith is to its adherent."
In part, Perkins says the Surgeon General may be deciding abortion policy, especially in the context of the debate on health care and whether the governmental program covers or pays for abortions.
"It only stands to reason that if this is the standard expected of the nation's top doctor, under a government healthcare system it would be expected of all," he told LifeNews.com.
The Surgeon General could also influence the debate on conscience rights for health care workers.
"Christian doctors and healthcare workers would be forced to choose between living by the teachings of Scripture and abandoning their careers of service or agreeing to serve in a public health care system devoid of moral absolutes where abortion and euthanasia are simply policy decisions," Perkins says. (Obama Surgeon General Pick Regina Benjamin May Back Abortion)
There would be no need to "guess" about Dr. Regina Benjamin's position on the taking of innocent human life at any time before the dawning of the age of "conciliarism" with the election of the Rosicrucian named Angelo Roncalli as antipope "John XXIII" on October 28, 1958. Catholics could proceed safely with the presumption that Dr. Benjamin was a believing, faithful Catholic who understood that the salvation of her immortal soul depended upon her adherence to everything taught by the true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Ah, Catholics prior to the "election" of Roncalli/John XXIII could presume that each of their pastors was of one mind and one heart with the Divine Founder and Invisible Head of the Catholic Church, Our Lord Himself. This is, of course, no longer the case.
Indeed, the ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding Dr. Regina Benjamin's position on abortion is the result of conciliarism's "official" propagation of various errors and falsehoods (the new ecclesiology, false ecumenism, inter-religious "prayer" services and inter-religious "dialogue," episcopal collegiality, religious liberty, separation of Church and State) as well as the counterfeit church's de facto toleration of "unapproved" errors, including those that deny articles contained in the Deposit of Faith and others that promote heresies anathematized by dogmatic councils of the Catholic Church. The Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service is of its abominable nature an effort to "reconcile" Catholics with a world that is founded upon one false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principle after another, accustoming them to accept rather blithely error in the name of "diversity" and "toleration" (see
Voices From Hell for a brief list of the many errors "tolerated" on a de facto basis by the counterfeit church of concilairism).
Catholics have been so malformed by the steady diet of error and profanation that they have been fed by the conciliar revolutionaries that they recoil in horror when they are told that they and/or their "bishops" or "pastors" are steeped in one error after another. One elderly Long Island man, showing off his paunch in a Knights of Columbus windbreaker, nearly punched me in the face on November 2, 1997, when I confronted his "pastor" over the latter's lack of belief in Purgatory.
This old Knight of Columbus put his fist to my face and shouted, "Shut your (expletive deleted) face. Father's right. There ain't no Purgatory no more." Catholics have learned to defend conciliarism's errors at the point of fisticuffs, if necessary, oblivious to the fact that their own sensus Catholicus has been destroyed and replaced by the synthetic falsehoods of Modernism's false religion, conciliarism, which have, both advertently and inadvertently, reinforced the falsehoods of Modernity itself.
Most Catholics would not have a problem at all with Dr. David Satcher's dismissal of the relevance of baby-killing to the position of holding the office of the Surgeon-General of the United States of America. Unfortunately for Dr. Satcher and for those Catholics who believe that one's support for baby-killing does not disqualify one from holding any office of public trust in any government anywhere in the world, God teaches us otherwise through one of his true Vicars on earth, the late Pope Pius XI:
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. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who, following the precedent of his not-so-saintly predecessor as the head of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, has "knighted" pro-abortion Talmudic rabbis, does not speak in such a way to pro-aborts in public life such as Barack Hussein Obama, empowering these pro-aborts to exploit the ecclesiastical divides caused by the conciliar revolutions to pit Catholics against each other as one of the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, willful murder, is minimized and/or justified as fully consonant with the pursuit of the common temporal good. The doctrinal and liturgical revolutions of conciliarism have produced a situation where the first loyalty of many Catholics who are as of yet attached to the conciliar structures is to their favorite political official and/or their favorite political party rather than to the absolute integrity of the Catholic Faith itself.
Alas, why should Catholics have absolute fealty to the Catholic Faith when most, although not all, of their "bishops" and "pastors" dissent from Its tenets in some way or another? We have to "guess" what should be presumed of Dr. Regina Benjamin because concilairism has made such guesswork necessary.
Although late in the day, this is still the feast day of Saint Mary Magdalene, who repented of her sins and represented us Magdalene souls at the foot of the Holy Cross as Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ redeemed us by shedding every single drop of His Most Precious Blood. We must recognize, my friends, that our sins have played a major role in worsening the state of the Church Militant on earth and of the world-at-large. Each of us has so very much for which we must make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Saint Mary Magdalene teaches us how to have true repentance for our sins as we seek to be converted on a daily basis by the graces won for us by Our Lord on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.
We must redouble our own efforts in prayer and sacrifice and penance and fasting and mortification to plant the seeds as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for the restoration of Christendom, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit in reparation for our sins and those of the whole world:
Francisco Marto spent long hours in church to console the "good God." So must we:
With his sister Jacinta and his cousin Lucia, he had been blessed with three appearances by an Angel, and six by Our Lady.
At his third appearance, the Angel said to these three young shepherd children: "Console your God". These words impressed Francisco very deeply, and guided his whole life. He wanted to be the "Consoler of Jesus". He felt most hurt when he saw Jesus offended, and his ideal was to give Him consolation. He wanted to avoid sin, and others to avoid it, to save his Saviour sadness. He made very sacrifice he could to give consolation to Jesus. To do this he would stay along for long hours in church, or hide himself in some lonely place. Shortly before he died, he said "In haven I'm going to console Our Lord and Our Lady very much." (Holy Card of Francisco Marto.)
Anyone who thinks that he is "consoling" Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ while he remains "neutral" about or supportive of His mystical dismemberment in the persons of innocent preborn children under cover of the civil law is an apostate who has excommunicated himself from the Catholic Church. Such a person is in need of our prayers, to be sure. However, such a person is a proximate source of social chaos, not an instrument of justice founded in the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.
Conscious of making reparation for our own sins, which, although forgiven and thus no longer exist, are in need of our making satisfaction here in this passing, mortal vale of tears before we die, may our Rosaries each day help lift the scales from the likes of Catholics who are trapped in the counterfeit church of conciliarism so that they return to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true or lasting social order, may be hastened for their own eternal good and for the common temporal good of our country, consecrated as it has been to the Immaculate Conception herself.
Vivat Christus Rex!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
