Want to Reconsider the Lesser of Two Evils, Folks?
by Thomas A. Droleskey
An important constituent element of Catholic scholarship is the making of distinctions. One of the things that has been truly appalling in some of the sedevacantist venues we have visited in the past five years now is an abject failure to make proper distinctions concerning the application of principles enunciated by our true popes in the concrete circumstances we face in our own individual lives and in the life of the world-at-large. It is this failure to make proper distinctions, for example, that leads to so much confusion on the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, which is why the articles written by Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., in The Remnant in 1973 and 1974 are important to read in order to avoid this confusion (see Outside the Church There is No Salvation, by Father Martin Stepanich in .pdf).
We must remember that, despite what Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI "feels," Scholasticism is the official philosophy of the Catholic Church. The sons of Saint Dominic made distinctions in their theological and philosophical works. We are required to use the faculty of reason that God has given us to make this distinctions ourselves. Although we live in a world where most people, including most Catholics, want everything neatly packaged for them in sound bites as they eschew making an effort to think deeply about various matters, it cannot be that way with us. We must think and think deeply as Catholics about various matters that come before us to read, basing this thought and reflection upon the graces sent to us through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, so that we can see the world and everything in it more clearly through the eyes of the true Faith.
Catholics in the United States of America are prone most particularly to emotionalism and sentimentality rather than rational thought. Americans are by their particular natures "doers," not thinkers. They tend to be "practical" to a fault. While action and practicality are important in daily living, they are secondary to the thought, based in prayer, and prudence necessary to choose from a variety of apparent goods. Most Americans have little interest in reading or the things of the mind. They are concerned with worldly pleasures and desires, rarely even bothering to think about First and Last Things, no less the possibility that they could lose their immortal souls for all eternity. This is but the heritage of Protestantism and of the naturalism it helped to spawn.
As Father Frederick Faber noted in The Precious Blood, the world of modernity influences Catholics negatively in many ways, starting with the very air of Pelagianism that we breathe, that is, the air of human self-redemption, that "we" can "do" anything we set our minds to doing:
All devotions have their
characteristics; all of them have their own theological meanings. We
must say something, therefore, upon the characteristics of the devotion
to the Precious Blood. In reality the whole Treatise has more or less
illustrated this matter. But something still remains to be said, and
something will bear to be repeated. We will take the last first.
Devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotional expression of the
prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul is the
apostle of redeeming grace. A devout study of his epistles would be our
deliverance from most of the errors of the day. He is truly the apostle
of all ages. To each age doubtless he seems to have a special mission.
Certainly his mission to our is very special. The very air we
breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel shapes of an old
Pelagianism. The spirit of the world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it
comes to pass that wrong theories among us are always constructed round a
nuclear of Pelagianism; and Pelagianism is just the heresy which is
least able to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is the age of
the natural as opposed to the supernatural, of the acquired as opposed
to the infused, of the active as opposed to the passive. This is what I
said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat. Now, this exclusive
fondness for the natural is on the whole very captivating. It takes with
the young, because it saves thought. It does not explain difficulties;
but it lessens the number of difficulties to be explained. It takes with
the idle; it dispenses from slowness and research. It takes with the
unimaginative, because it withdraws just the very element in religion
which teases them. It takes with the worldly, because it subtracts the
enthusiasm from piety and the sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with
the controversial, because it is a short road and a shallow ford. It
forms a school of thought which, while it admits that we have an
abundance of grace, intimates that we are not much better for it. It
merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes the sovereignty of God
odious by representing it as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all
its ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devotion to the
Precious Blood.
The time is also one of libertinage; and a time of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical logic, one of infidelity. Whatever
brings out God's side in creation, and magnifies his incessant
supernatural operation in it, is the controversy which infidelity can
least withstand. Now, the devotion to the Precious Blood does
this in a very remarkable way. It shows that the true significance in
every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which
it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (Father Frederick
Faber, The Precious Blood, written in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 258-259.)
Unimaginative people have little time for thought or reflection. It's too "hard." It takes too "long." Most Americans, including most Catholics, do not want to hear that their electoral system is fraudulent, that it consists of "choices" between false "opposites" that winds up empowering career politicians, each of whom is a naturalist, and the civil state while their legitimate liberties are curbed in the process by a variety of measures, including the use of confiscatory taxes to fund profligate spending on domestic entitlement programs and needless foreign wars. In other words, most Americans, including most Catholics, do not want to hear that our situation today is almost identical to that which brought down the Rome of the caesars at the beginning of the Fifth Century A.D.
Two recent articles, March of the Midget Naturalists and Bush the Lesser in a Coiffure, have discussed the absolute joke that is the quadrennial march of midget naturalists for a political party's presidential nomination. Although people are free to believe what they want as they spin their wheels and permit the devil to agitate and excite them about the possibility of ousting the currently reigning caesar of the naturalist "left," all of the political "action" in the world is not going to change the simple fact that professional politicians of the "left" and the "right" both believe that it is possible for men and their nations to pursue the common temporal good without any reference to the simple fact that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is their King, both individually and collectively, and that men must submit in all things that pertain to the good of their immortal souls that He entrusted exclusively to His true Church, the Catholic Church, for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.
As I have noted in a number of articles on this site in recent years, the apparent "greater evil" is simply a way for the devil to excite us to that we will accept the "incremental" spread of evil in the belief that the supposedly "lesser" evil represents a means, albeit temporary, to retard the evils being proposed or that have been advanced by the allegedly "greater" evil. Much evil was spread in an "incremental" way during the administration of President George Walker Bush, whose "conservative" brand of statism made possible the election of Barack Hussein Obama (see Y2K's Lesser Evil Has Brought Us Great Evils). And much evil would have been spread if the supposedly "lesser" evil in the 2008 election, United States Senator John Sidney McCain III (R-Arizona), had won the election on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.
John Sidney McCain, apart from being in favor the chemical assassination of innocent preborn children by means of contraceptive pills and devices and potions, supports the direct, intentional surgical dismember of the innocent preborn in the "hard" cases and is a full-throated supporter of embryonic stem cell research. He is also a war monger of the first order, who is out war mongering Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus when it comes to American participation in the civil war in Libya, which is being waged by secular Mohammedans such as Moammar Ghaddafi on the one hand and fundamentalist Mohammedan jihadists on the other. It is those jihadists who are being supported by the government of the United States of America in conjunction with several other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (see Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion).
George Will, a naturalist who is not exactly an advocate of the Social Reign of Christ the King, has, it appears, had it with the endless wars of the presidential and congressional war hawks, singling out McCain's madness for special criticism:
Elevating the fallacy of the false alternative to a foreign
policy, John McCain and a few others believe Republicans who oppose U.S.
intervention in Libya’s civil war — and who think a decade of warfare
in Afghanistan is enough — are isolationists. This is less a thought
than a flight from thinking, which involves making sensible
distinctions.
Last Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” McCain warned that the GOP has always had “an isolation strain.” He calls it “the Pat
Buchanan wing,” which he contrasts with “the Republican Party that has
been willing to stand up for freedom for people all over the world.”
Rather a lot turns on the meaning of “stand up for.”
Between wishing success to people fighting for freedom and sending in
the Marines (or the drones), there is as much middle ground for
temperate people as there is between Buchanan, a sort of
come-home-America conservative, and McCain, a promiscuous
interventionist. When asked his response to those, including Defense
Secretary Robert Gates,
who say there was no vital U.S. interest at stake when the Libya
intervention began, McCain said: “Our interests are our values” and “our
values are that we don’t want people needlessly slaughtered by the
thousands,” as Moammar Gaddafi seemed to threaten to do, “if we can
prevent such activity.” Under the McCain Doctrine, America’s military
would have just begun to fight, and would never stop.
Americans
are, however, war weary — which is a good thing: What kind of people
would they be if they were not? U.S. involvement in the Second World War
lasted 1,346 days. U.S. fighting in Afghanistan reached that milestone
six years ago (June 14, 2005). America is fighting there, in Iraq, in
western Pakistan, in Yemen and in Libya. Where next? Under the McCain
Doctrine, wherever U.S. “values” are affronted — and those who demur
from this global crusade are isolationists, akin to those who, 70 years
ago, thought broad oceans and placid neighbors guaranteed America’s
security from Hitler and Japan.
Is Jim Webb an isolationist? Virginia’s Democratic senator, who was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Navy, discusses Libya with a trenchancy that befits a decorated Marine combat veteran (Vietnam) and that should shame reticent Republicans:
“Was
our country under attack, or under the threat of imminent attack? Was a
clearly vital national interest at stake? Were we invoking the inherent
right of self-defense as outlined in the United Nations charter? Were
we called upon by treaty commitments to come to the aid of an ally? Were
we responding in kind to an attack on our forces elsewhere, as we did
in the 1986 raids in Libya after American soldiers had been killed in a
disco in Berlin? Were we rescuing Americans in distress, as we did in
Grenada in 1983? No, we were not.”
McCain, however, says we must
achieve regime change in Libya because if Gaddafi survives, he will try
to “harm” America. This is always the last argument for pressing on with
imprudent interventions (see Vietnam, circa 1969): We must continue
fighting because we started fighting.
Sen. Lindsey Graham —
Sancho Panza to McCain’s Don Quixote — says “Congress should sort of
shut up” about Libya. This ukase might make more sense if Congress had
said anything institutionally about Libya.
Although Barack
Obama’s shifting reasons for the Libyan war are as risible as his
denial that it is a war, some conservatives seem to regard it as “a
splendid little war.” That was Ambassador John Hay’s description (in a
letter to Theodore Roosevelt) of the Spanish-American War. McCain has
frequently expressed admiration for TR, the only president who was an
unvarnished imperialist (see Evan Thomas’s book “The War Lovers”).
McCain’s bellicosity is, however, at least less obnoxious than TR’s,
which represented a toxic strain of early 20th-century progressivism — a
cocktail of racialism and political Darwinism.
Regarding Libya, McCain on Sunday said, “I wonder what Ronald Reagan would be saying today.” Wondering is speculation; we know this:
When a terrorist attack that killed 241 Marines and other troops taught Reagan the folly of deploying them at Beirut
airport with a vague mission and dangerous rules of engagement, he was
strong enough to reverse this intervention in a civil war. Would that he
had heeded a freshman congressman from Arizona who opposed the House
resolution endorsing the intervention. But, then, the McCain of 1983
was, by the standards of the McCain of 2011, an isolationist. (John McCain's Never-Ending War.)
This is one time that I find myself in complete agreement with George Will, starting with his excellent description of the "fallacy of false alternatives," including also his description of Theodore Roosevelt, whose beloved Spanish-American War introduced the evils of Protestant "churches" and Masonic lodges into such Catholic lands as Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Philippines and Guam. Will even gets it right about the Vietnam War, which, by the precepts of the Just War Theory, was an immoral enterprise as there was no standard as to what constituted "victory," and, quite indeed, there was no policy to win the war. It was, as I have come to realize over the course of the last two decades, an immoral war.
Although the war mongering of globalists such as Barack Hussein Obama and American exceptionalists such as George Walker Bush and John Sidney McCain III differs in some respects, it is identical in its effects. Have bombs, will drop. McCain is so much of a war monger that he would have started a conflagration with Iran if his masters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem told him to do so.
Ah, yes, the lesser of two evils. Think again, folks. Think as Catholics. Look beneath the surface before mouthing these slogans or believing the shallow harangues given by some clergymen who do not make the proper distinctions whatsoever in Pope Pius XII's allocutions on voting for the "lesser of two evils." Father Peter Scott of the Society of Saint Pius X has made such distinctions, and they are nothing other than pure, unadulterated Catholicism:
It
is certainly true that the modernists consider democracy, and the right
to vote, as sacrosanct, an immediate consequence of human dignity,
directly connected with their humanistic religion.
Reacting against this, knowing as we do how much
the electoral system is unjust, realizing how much modern democracy is
based upon the false liberal principle of human freedom, escaping from
all objective divine and moral law as it does, aware of how little real
choice there is between the candidates, as also of how false is the
impression that one man’s vote is really going to make a difference to
such a secular, ungodly system–we might easily conclude that there is no
obligation to vote at all.
Yet the Church’s teaching on the subject is not
anything new. Without approving the modern system of democracy and its
false principle of the sovereignty of the people, the Church
nevertheless binds us to contribute towards the common good of society,
by an obligation of legal justice. This principle is expressed well by
Pope Pius XII in his April 20, 1946, discourse to Italian Catholic
Action:
The people is called on to take an always larger
part in the public life of the nation. This participation brings with
it grave responsibilities. Hence the necessity for the faithful to have
clear, solid, precise knowledge of their duties in the moral and
religious domain with respect to their exercise of their civil rights,
and in particular of the right to vote.
In fact, Pope Pius XII had clearly
explained that it is precisely on account of the anti-Catholic and
secular spirit that surrounds Catholics that they have the duty to
defend the Church by the correct exercise of their right to vote. It is
to prevent a greater evil. He had stated on March 16, 1946, to the
parish priests of Rome:
The exercise of the right to vote is an act of
grave moral responsibility, at least with respect to the electing of
those who are called to give to a country its constitution and its laws,
and in particular those that affect the sanctification of holy days of
obligation, marriage, the family, schools and the just and equitable
regulation of many social questions. It is the Church’s duty to explain
to the faithful the moral duties that flow from this electoral right.
Pope Pius XII was even more explicit two years
later, again when speaking to the parish priests of Rome. He explained
that in the precise circumstances of the time it was an obligation under
pain of mortal sin for all the faithful to use their vote, and this
even for women. Although it is certainly true that in the traditional
conception of democracy it is only the heads of families who vote, it is
perfectly permissible for women to use the right of vote when it is
granted, and in fact it becomes an obligation to do so when the common
good depends upon all Catholics using their vote correctly.
Here is the text of March 10, 1948:
In the present circumstances, it is a strict
obligation for all those who have the right to vote, men and women, to
take part in the elections. Whoever abstains from doing so, in
particular by indolence or weakness, commits a sin grave in itself, a
mortal fault. Each one must follow the dictate of his own conscience. However,
it is obvious that the voice of conscience imposes on every Catholic to
give his vote to the candidates who offer truly sufficient guarantees
for the protection of the rights of God and of souls, for the true good
of individuals, families and of society, according to the love of God
and Catholic moral teaching.
This application of the
Church’s social teaching to the particular situation of the time is in
accord with the teaching of the moral theologians, who speak of the
grave sin of omission for those who simply neglect to elect good,
Catholic representatives, and of the duty of doing all in our power of
encouraging suitable laymen to work towards using the electoral system
to obtain worthy lawmakers.
However, how far removed we are from this
situation! Clearly, we are no longer in the circumstance of having to
change between Catholic and non-Catholic, morally upright and liberal
representatives. All the alternatives are liberal, the deception and the
manipulation of the public by the media is rampant. In practice, it
generally comes down to the question of whether or not it is permissible
to vote for an unworthy candidate (e.g., a candidate who only
approves abortion in cases of rape or incest), for he would at least (we
suppose) be the lesser evil. In such a case, there can be no obligation
to vote, for all the reasons that could oblige, mentioned by Pope Pius
XII, no longer apply.
Nevertheless, it is still permissible to vote in
such a case, provided that one can be sure that there truly is a lesser
evil, and that there is a grave reason to do so (e.g., to avoid
abortion on demand, or promotion of unnatural methods of birth
control), and one has the good intention of providing for the good of
society as best one can. This is called material cooperation. However, it can never be obligatory.
Consequently, in the rare case that there is a
clearly, publicly Catholic candidate who supports the teaching of the
Church, there is a strict moral obligation to vote, under pain of mortal
sin. Where there is a clear gain possible from the correct use of a
vote for some other candidate, it can be recommended or counseled. However,
when there is no clear advantage it would be better to abstain, so as
not to contribute even to a material participation. (Angelus Online)
No one who has an ounce of
intellectual honesty can contend that there is one candidate among the
presidential and vice presidential nominees of the major political
parties in the United States of America who supports the teaching of the
Church. Not one. (And let's take 1948, the year of Pope Pius XII's
second allocution to the priests of Rome: Please tell me which
presidential candidate of the United States of America supported the
teaching of the Catholic Church? The Freemason Harry Truman? The WASP
Thomas E. Dewey. The Communist apologist Henry Agard Wallace? The
Freemason and segregationist Strom Thurmond? Some well-meaning
Americanist authors, men who never understood for one blessed moment the
false premises of the American founding, have used Pope Pius XII's
allocutions on voting without discussing the qualifications include by
the late pontiff or without realizing that American politics and
politicians do not favor the cause of the Catholic Church or the good of
souls. Truth matters. We must apply papal dicta in the concrete
circumstances in which we find ourselves. Facts matter.)
But what about Pope Pius XII's allocution to an
international conference on voting in 1951 that some are citing in their
parish bulletins? All right, what about this allocution. It contains
the exact same qualifications and conditions that were contained in the
1948 allocution to the priests of Rome.
It is a right and a duty
to draw the attention of the faithful to draw the attention of the
faithful to the extraordinary importance of elections and the moral
responsibility which rests on everyone who has the right to vote.
Without any doubt, the Church intends to remain outside and above
political parties, but how can she remain indifferent to the composition
of a Parliament when the Constitution give it power to pass laws which
so directly affect the highest religious interests and even the
condition of life of the Church herself?....
It is a strict duty for all
who have the right, men or women, to take part in the elections. Whoever
abstains, especially out of cowardice, commits a grave sin, a mortal
fault.
Everyone has the right to vote according to the
dictates of his own conscience. Now, it is evident that the voice of
this conscience imposes upon every sincere Catholic the duty of giving
his or her vote to candidates or those lists of candidates, who really
offer sufficient assurances for safeguarding the rights of God and the
souls of men, for the real good of individuals, families, and society,
according to the law of God and moral Christian doctrine.
Please note the condition to
the exercise of the franchise that is contained in the final paragraph
of this quotation. The obligation to vote is conditioned on there being
candidates who safeguard "the rights of God and the souls of men, for
the good of individuals, families, and society, according to the law of
God and moral Christian doctrine." I made a more than defensible
case in 2008 that there were no such candidates running for the President of the
United States of America at that time and that there was thus no obligation to vote.
Disagree with me? Peachy keen swell. John McCain and and Sarah Heath
Palin supported grave evils contrary to the rights of God and the souls of
men, contrary to the law of God and Christian moral doctrine. I am not
obligated under penalty of Mortal Sin to cast my vote for these products
of the Protestant Revolution and Judeo-Masonry. McCain has shown himself to be such as much a war-monger as Obama. Where's the difference?
It is also interesting to
point out that the text of the conditions attached in Pope Pius XII's
1951 allocution to the conference on emigration is almost identical to that used in his 1948 allocution to the priests of Rome:
In the present circumstances, it is a strict
obligation for all those who have the right to vote, men and women, to
take part in the elections. Whoever abstains from doing so, in
particular by indolence or weakness, commits a sin grave in itself, a
mortal fault. Each one must follow the dictate of his own conscience. However,
it is obvious that the voice of conscience imposes on every Catholic to
give his vote to the candidates who offer truly sufficient guarantees
for the protection of the rights of God and of souls, for the true good
of individuals, families and of society, according to the love of God
and Catholic moral teaching.
These conditions must be applied by the use of our Catholic reason.
And anyone who cannot see that evils have advanced by gigantic leaps
and bounds in the past forty years as we have gone like lemmings to the
polls to vote for naturalists who believe in and have acted upon their
false, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian, Protestant and
Judeo-Masonic beliefs is in the trapped in the insane asylum of
naturalism that gave us such statist monsters enabled by the Catholic
vote as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines
Johnson, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, George Walker Bush and Barack Hussein Obama.
Aren't we supposed to learn from our mistakes? There is as little
"fixing" the insanity of the American system as there is "fixing" the Novus Ordo or the apostasies of conciliarism by staying "within the structures and fighting for the Faith." (See: A World of Sisyphuses.)
What you choose to do, good readers, is your
business. If you want to believe that you are preventing the "greater
evil" (Barack Hussein Obama) from getting re-elected next year by voting for the "lesser evil" represented by whichever midget naturalist gets nominated to run against him, go right ahead.
My contention, supported by the documentation of
positions of the candidates and the manner in which the so-called
"lesser evil" of the year 2000, George Walker Bush, has made a landslide
by a Marxist named Barack Hussein Obama possible, is that the so-called
"lesser evil" is equivalent to the greater as the devil is able to
advance his agenda of darkness more subtly in a "conservative" statist's
administration than in a "socialist" statist administration. Disagree?
Go right ahead. I will work for the Social Reign of Christ the King by
pointing out the errors of naturalism and that the only thing you get
when you vote for a naturalist is more naturalism! The devil wins each
time, and no Catholic has any moral obligation under the penalty of
Mortal Sin to enable this by voting.
Pope Pius XII established a condition for the morally obligatory nature of voting:
However, it is obvious that the voice of
conscience imposes on every Catholic to give his vote to the candidates
who offer truly sufficient guarantees for the protection of the rights
of God and of souls, for the true good of individuals, families and of
society, according to the love of God and Catholic moral teaching.
My informed conscience, aware
of the actual facts of our political situation and the false principles
of the founding of this nation, tells me that there is no candidate who
offers "truly sufficient guarantees for the protection of the rights of
God and of souls, for the true good of individuals, families and of
society, according to the love of God and Catholic moral teaching."
This a matter of a prudential judgment in the practical order of things,
one that is not made lightly or without a due consideration of
governing principles as they relate to the facts of our situation today.
And it is a purely personal judgment that is not binding upon anyone
else.
What you decide to do next year is your business.
Yes, it might be possible for Obama to lose re-election next year. So what? How long did the apparent "victories" of the twelve years of Republican presidential rule under Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush last? For no more than two days after William Jefferson Blythe Clinton was sworn into office on January 20, 1993. The forty-second president signed five executive orders on January 22, 1993, the twentieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, that reversed the Reagan-Bush era "Mexico City" policy and authorized the United States Food and Drug Administration to conduct the tests on the human pesticide, RU-486, to determine whether it could be marketed in the United States of America. The other Clinton executive orders issued that day reversed the Title 10 regulations banning abortion referral by Federal employees and lifted the ban on funding for embryonic stem-cell transplants and instructed military hospitals to perfect surgical abortions. Yes, my few and most invisible readers, it's all Written In Sand.
Whatever "gains" would be made if a midget naturalist of the "right" gets elected next year would be wiped out whenever the next naturalist of the "left" got elected, and don't think that some lefty won't get elected at some point if a "rightly" gets in next year. Folks, the demographics show us where we are headed barring a major chastisement sent by God Himself: nonwhites will make up a majority of this country's population by the middle of this century, meaning in just thirty-nine years. Many of those nonwhites are Asians who are, for all intents and purposes, totally godless, devoid of even the heretical beliefs preached by Protestantism about Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Others are Mohammedans, who are committed to winning the day here just as they have won it in one European country after another. Still others will be Spanish-speaking citizens whose Catholicism, such as it has been, will be eclipsed by the indoctrination of "public schools" and the various outlets of what is referred to as "popular culture." (For a review of these population trends, please see Nonwhites make up more than half of live births now.)
Although the subject of the next original article on this site, these population trends are the result of how the "white majority," including Catholics and non-Catholics alike, have embraced contraception and abortion and our entire ethos of materialism and self-indulgence. Looming on the horizon, if God does not chastise this country before then, is the election of some president who will make those old enough to remember pine for the "good old days" of President Barack Hussein Obama. Without Catholicism, ladies and gentlemen, men and nations must fall to pieces over the course of time. It is really that simple. Do you really think that God is going to "bless" a nation that kills babies by chemical and surgical means and sanctions "marriage" between persons of the same gender and pollutes the souls of people in this country around the world with the poisons ("rock music," indecent, gross and obscene television programs and motion pictures and magazines, vulgarity and barbarism) of "popular culture."
If you don't want to reconsider the "lesser of two evils" slogan, that's your business. For my part, though, I am going to keep reminding the few readers of this site of the following truths, stated by Pope Leo XIII in Annum Sacrum, May 25, 1889, as he exhorted men and their nations to be consecrated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus:
Already more than once We have
endeavored, after the example of Our predecessors Innocent XII, Benedict XIII,
Clement XIII, Pius VI, and Pius IX., devoutly to foster and bring out into
fuller light that most excellent form of devotion which has for its object the
veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; this We did especially by the Decree
given on June 28, 1889, by which We raised the Feast under that name to the
dignity of the first class. But now We have in mind a
more signal form of devotion which shall be in a manner the crowning
perfection of all the honors that people have been accustomed to pay to the
Sacred Heart, and which We confidently trust will be most pleasing to Jesus
Christ, our Redeemer. This is not the first time, however, that the design of
which We speak has been mooted. Twenty-five years ago, on the approach of the
solemnities of the second centenary of the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque's
reception of the Divine command to propagate the worship of the Sacred Heart,
many letters from all parts, not merely from private persons but from Bishops
also were sent to Pius IX. begging that he would consent to consecrate the
whole human race to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was thought best at the
time to postpone the matter in order that a well-considered decision might be
arrived at. Meanwhile permission was granted to individual cities which
desired it thus to consecrate themselves, and a form of consecration was drawn
up. Now, for certain new and additional reasons, We consider that the plan is
ripe for fulfilment.
3. This world-wide and solemn testimony of
allegiance and piety is especially appropriate to Jesus Christ, who is the
Head and Supreme Lord of the race. His empire extends not only over Catholic nations and those who, having
been duly washed in the waters of holy baptism, belong of right to the
Church, although erroneous opinions keep them astray, or dissent from her
teaching cuts them off from her care; it comprises also all those who are
deprived of the Christian faith, so that the whole human race is most truly
under the power of Jesus Christ. For He who is the Only-begotten Son of God
the Father, having the same substance with Him and being the brightness of
His glory and the figure of His substance (Hebrews i., 3) necessarily has
everything in common with the Father, and therefore sovereign power over all
things. This is why the Son of God thus speaks of Himself through the
Prophet: "But I am appointed king by him over Sion, his holy mountain.
. . The Lord said to me, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask
of me and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance and the utmost
parts of the earth for thy possession" (Psalm, ii.). By these words He
declares that He has power from God over the whole Church, which is
signified by Mount Sion, and also over the rest of the world to its
uttermost ends. On what foundation this sovereign power rests is made
sufficiently plain by the words, "Thou art My Son." For by the
very fact that He is the Son of the King of all, He is also the heir of all
His Father's power: hence the words-"I will give thee the Gentiles for
thy inheritance," which are similar to those used by Paul the Apostle,
"whom he bath appointed heir of all things" (Hebrews i., 2).
4. But we should now give most special
consideration to the declarations made by Jesus Christ, not through the
Apostles or the Prophets but by His own words. To the Roman Governor who
asked Him, "Art thou a king then?" He answered unhesitatingly,
"Thou sayest that I am a king" (John xviii. 37). And the greatness
of this power and the boundlessness of His kingdom is still more clearly
declared in these words to the Apostles: "All power is given to me in
heaven and on earth" (Matthew xxviii., 18). If then all power has been
given to Christ it follows of necessity that His empire must be supreme,
absolute and independent of the will of any other, so that none is either
equal or like unto it: and since it has been given in heaven and on earth it
ought to have heaven and earth obedient to it. And verily he has acted on
this extraordinary and peculiar right when He
commanded His Apostles to preach His doctrine over the earth, to gather all
men together into the one body of the Church by the baptism of salvation,
and to bind them by laws, which no one could reject without risking his
eternal salvation.
5. But this is not all. Christ reigns nor
only by natural right as the Son of God, but also by a right that He has
acquired. For He it was who snatched us "from the power of
darkness" (Colossians i., 13), and "gave Himself for the
redemption of all" (I Timothy ii., 6). Therefore not only Catholics,
and those who have duly received Christian baptism, but also all men,
individually and collectively, have become to Him "a purchased
people" (I Peter ii., 9). St. Augustine's words are therefore to the
point when he says: "You ask what price He paid? See what He gave and
you will understand how much He paid. The price was the blood of Christ.
What could cost so much but the whole world, and all its people? The great
price He paid was paid for all" (T. 120 on St. John).
6. How it comes about that infidels
themselves are subject to the power and dominion of Jesus Christ is clearly
shown by St. Thomas, who gives us the reason and its explanation. For having
put the question whether His judicial power extends to all men, and having
stated that judicial authority flows naturally from royal authority, he
concludes decisively as follows: "All things are subject to Christ as
far as His power is concerned, although they are not all subject to Him in
the exercise of that power" (3a., p., q. 59, a. 4). This sovereign
power of Christ over men is exercised by truth, justice, and above all, by
charity.
7. To this twofold ground of His power and
domination He graciously allows us, if we think fit, to add voluntary
consecration. Jesus Christ, our God and our Redeemer, is rich in the fullest
and perfect possession of all things: we, on the other hand, are so poor and
needy that we have nothing of our own to offer Him as a gift. But yet, in
His infinite goodness and love, He in no way objects to our giving and
consecrating to Him what is already His, as if it were really our own; nay,
far from refusing such an offering, He positively desires it and asks for
it: "My son, give me thy heart." We are, therefore, able to be
pleasing to Him by the good will and the affection of our
soul. For by consecrating ourselves to Him we not only declare our open and
free acknowledgment and acceptance of His authority over us, but we also
testify that if what we offer as a gift were really our own, we would still
offer it with our whole heart. We also beg of Him that He would vouchsafe to
receive it from us, though clearly His own. Such is the efficacy of the act
of which We speak, such is the meaning underlying Our words.
8. And since there is in the Sacred Heart
a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ which
moves us to love one another, therefore is it fit and proper that we should
consecrate ourselves to His most Sacred Heart-an act which is nothing else
than an offering and a binding of oneself to Jesus Christ, seeing that
whatever honor, veneration and love is given to this divine Heart is really
and truly given to Christ Himself. (Pope Leo XIII, Annum Sacrum, May 25, 1889.)
Conscious of making reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our own sins which have worsened the state of the Church and the world, may our Rosaries each day help lift the scales from the likes of the confused public officials in the world today, thereby hastening their return or conversion to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true or lasting social order.
May the Immaculate Heart of Mary triumph soon!
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 William the Abbot, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
