We're Not in Kansas Any More

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Many efforts have been made to "interpret" L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz and its sequels. The famous 1939 film adaptation starring Judy Garland, Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, and Margaret Hamilton (and, of course, The Singer Midgets as the Munchkins) treated as a dream-sequence Dorothy Gale's trip to the Land of Oz, which Baum represented in his books as pure fantasy (that is, that Oz was a "real" place visited by a very much awake and conscious Dorothy Gale). Some critics have claimed that L. Frank Baum's books were influenced the diabolical "religion" known as Theosophy. This may or may not be true. However, there is definitely an element of mockery of Catholicism in the 1939 film adaptation that I saw many times on television in my childhood.

A former colleague of mine from Illinois State University, Dr. John A. Gueguen, Jr., now a professor-emeritus, suggested to me in 1978 that The Wizard of Oz was a mockery of the Faith and asked me if I agreed. I thought about it for a moment and said, "Yes. I can see that. You have Toto the dog exposing the 'wizard' as a fraud, symbolic for the contention that there is no true God of Revelation. There is the 'commissioning' of the Scarecrow by the 'wizard' to serve as his successor after he 'ascends' into the sky in his hot air balloon. And there is the theme of self-redemption, that Dorothy had it within her power all along to go home to Kansas if only she clicked the heels of her red ruby slippers and said 'there's no place like home, there's no place like home.'"

Having watched the movie adaptation so many times, however, I do make reference to various scenes in my lectures now and again. Dorothy's line to Toto when "awakening" in the Land of Oz, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more" (this is the exact quote, by the way, Page 3 of The Wizard of Oz Script), is a particularly apt one to describe the state-of-mind possessed by many traditionally-minded Catholics all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide. That is, many traditionally-minded Catholics hearken back to the 1950s as a "frame of reference" for how things should be in the future once God in His Holy Providence sees fit to raise the Church Militant on earth up from the catacombs following the end of our current period of apostasy and betrayal.

The 1950s, however, was not so "golden." Indeed, that decade, which was the first of my life that began on November 24, 1951, was a harbinger of the doctrinal, liturgical and social revolutions that were to come to the surface in the 1960s as a variety of diabolical forces that had been at work for several centuries coalesced and manifested themselves into a cohesive force for disorder and chaos in the lives of individuals and their societies. This is not to condemn those who did not see things clearly back in the 1950s. My own late parents saw some elements of change that were alarming (such as "rock" music) but participated fully in others (watching television, believing in the near-salvific nature of electoral politics, dressing with short sleeves and in shorts in full violation of Our Lady's Fatima dress code). The conversation at the dinner table revolved around electoral politics and public policy, not around the Faith or the lives of the saints.

Our family was not at all atypical. Many other families, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, spent their days watching television programming, which was in its infancy in the 1950s. As I have noted on other occasions on this site, television programming in the 1950s was inoffensive in that generic, Judeo-Masonic standards of "decency" prevailed, at least for the most part. This does not mean that said programming was harmless. It was not.

Television programming in the 1950s was most harmful for three reasons.

First, television programming in the 1950s accustomed people to patterning their lives around the schedules of the various television networks, building on the habits that developed in the era of radio broadcasting before and in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Families adjusted their meal times to accommodate the television schedules. Some parishes had to reschedule their perpetual novenas, such as those to the Mother of Perpetual Help, as parishioners wanted to stay home and watch their favorite programs instead of being before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Families conversed less with each other. People got to bed later and later, especially with the advent of The Tonight Show (which began as Broadway Open House with Jerry Lester before Steve Allen and Jack Paar paved in the 1950s for the "king" of late-night television, Johnny Carson, in 1962), producing some anecdotal evidence that the productivity of workers decreased slightly and the attentiveness of students varied according to how late they had been up the night before a particular examination.

Second, television programming in the 1950s accustomed people more and more to accepting passively the propaganda broadcast into their homes. It is far, far easier to let others do one's thinking for one than to spend time in prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence and to pray more Rosaries as one spend some time each night in spiritual reading. The "word" of those on television became "gospel" to so many people, including a lot of Catholics. This permitted all manner of nefarious messages n the 1960s and 1970s to be communicated on television with hardly a peep from the average Catholic, who, at least for the most part, believed in the "television" more than his Faith. And it does not take much in the way of verbiage to demonstrate how the passivity engendered in the 1950s become so ingrained in the life of Catholics that a large percentage of them today accept rank pornography and blasphemy on television as nothing objectionable

Third, television programming in the 1950s proved itself to be a potent force in behalf of naturalism and religious indifferentism. Characters in situation comedies and in dramas "solved" their problems on their own, helping to propagating in the minds of so many Catholics the Americanist myth of self-redemption, that "we" can do anything "we" set our minds to doing because, after all, "we" are Americans, a prideful naturalistic attitude that is nothing other than the spirit of the heresy of semi-Pelagianism upon which the country was built in the first place. Television programming in the 1950s thus reinforced another basic tenet of the Americanist heresy, that it didn't make any difference what religion, if any, one belonged to as long as one was a "good" person and had the "best" of intentions.

Yet it is the case that there are Catholics even in fully traditional Catholic venues where no concessions are made to conciliarism or its false shepherds who are fully immersed in the most vile television program imaginable. Some pastors in these venues fulfill their duties as would the Cure of Ars, Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, or Padre Pio to denounce this blithe acceptance of the near occasions of sin or of Actual Sin itself. Others, afraid to offend the the sensibilities of their parishioners, say not a word. After all, one such silent pastor told me, "Canon Law doesn't say we have to denounce evils in the popular culture." His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., calls television "Hellevision." How correct His Excellency is!

Pope Pius VI, writing in Inscrutabile, December 25, 1776, reminded the bishops of his own day that, yes, indeed, pastors of souls have an obligation to refute error and to defend the Faith:

 

Our great predecessor Gregory, in instructing the heads of the churches, said with his usual excellence: "Often imprudent guides in their fear of losing human favor are afraid to speak the right freely. As the word of truth has it, they guard their flock not with a shepherd's zeal but as hirelings do, since they flee when the wolf approaches by hiding themselves in silence.... A shepherd fearing to speak the right is simply a man retreating by keeping silent." But if the wicked enemy of the human race, the better to frustrate your efforts, ever brings it about that a plague of epidemic proportions is hidden from the religious powers of the world, please do not be terrified but walk in God's house in harmony, with prayer, and in truth, the three arms of our service. Remember that when the people of Juda were defiled, the best means of purification was the public reading to all, from the least to the greatest, of the book of the law lately found by the priest Helcias in the Lord's temple; at once the whole people agreed to destroy the abominations and seal a covenant in the Lord's presence to follow after the Lord and observe His precepts, testimonies and ceremonies with their whole heart and soul." For the same reason Josaphat sent priests and Levites to bring the book of the law throughout the cities of Juda and to teach the people. The proclamation of the divine word has been entrusted to your faith by divine, not human, authority. So assemble your people and preach to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. From that divine source and heavenly teaching draw draughts of true philosophy for your flock. Persuade them that subjects ought to keep faith and show obedience to those who by God's ordering lead and rule them. To those who are devoted to the ministry of the Church, give proofs of faith, continence, sobriety, knowledge, and liberality, that they may please Him to whom they have proved themselves and boast only of what is serious, moderate, and religious. But above all kindle in the minds of everyone that love for one another which Christ the Lord so often and so specifically praised. For this is the one sign of Christians and the bond of perfection.

 

Protecting the innocence of souls is an essential obligation of pastors and parents and teachers. Pope Pius XI put the matter this way in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1931:

It is no less necessary to direct and watch the education of the adolescent, "soft as wax to be moulded into vice," in whatever other environment he may happen to be, removing occasions of evil and providing occasions for good in his recreations and social intercourse; for "evil communications corrupt good manners."

More than ever nowadays an extended and careful vigilance is necessary, inasmuch as the dangers of moral and religious shipwreck are greater for inexperienced youth. Especially is this true of impious and immoral books, often diabolically circulated at low prices; of the cinema, which multiplies every kind of exhibition; and now also of the radio, which facilitates every kind of communications. These most powerful means of publicity, which can be of great utility for instruction and education when directed by sound principles, are only too often used as an incentive to evil passions and greed for gain. St. Augustine deplored the passion for the shows of the circus which possessed even some Christians of his time, and he dramatically narrates the infatuation for them, fortunately only temporary, of his disciple and friend Alipius.How often today must parents and educators bewail the corruption of youth brought about by the modern theater and the vile book!

 

What applies to television applies as well to the gradual acceptance of "rock and roll" "music" in the 1950s. This is an area where my own late parents held the line, explaining in a dinner conversation in 1955 that the gyrations and the beat of the music of Elvis Presley was decadent. That was good enough for me at the age of four, and it remained good enough for me throughout the 1960s as I understood that "rock" "music" popularized by The Beatles and others was from the devil and was designed to lead souls to Hell for all eternity. Dick Clark's American Bandstand helped to "mainstream" this vile form of noise in the 1950s, as did various disk jockeys who popularized various "singers" and who gave some credibility, at the very least, to the "Beatnik" generation that pioneered a path of social delinquency that was mastered by the "flower children" a decade later. Very few pastors of souls in Catholic parishes preached against the evil of "rock" "music" back in the 1950s. It is no wonder that this diabolical noise has found its way into "youth" "Masses" in the Novus Ordo service and is featured in World Youth Day and has been played in "papal" "Masses."

The 1950s also saw a gradual acceptance of immodesty as dresses and skirts got ever so shorter and as men began to take some liberties their own attire. Even Catholics participated in this gradual acceptance of immodesty, which became a revolution in the 1960s and thereafter.

Although it is true that the American bishops received permission from the Holy See in the 1930s for women to wear quarter-length sleeves and dresses or skirts that were barely below the knee, this fact alone should teach us something about the pernicious influences of Americanism on the life of the Faith in the United States of America. The same bishops who did not believe that there was a necessity of Catholicizing the country and who apologized for one anti-Catholic politician in the Democrat Party after another as they endorsed uncritically the American separation of Church and State that had been condemned categorically by Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, did not see the devil's hand in the gradual acceptance of "progressive" standards of dress, something that was seen by Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D.

The avowed enemies of God are rejoicing--temporarily--at having brought about an almost total collapse of the virtue of modesty among once virtuous Christian womanhood, while those commissioned by God to teach and uphold this angelic virtue insist on cowardly silence and indifference about it and on gutless permissiveness in manner of dress everywhere.

Meanwhile, vast numbers of supposedly "good" people remain as if without a conscience, being morally blind and insensitive as to what has really happened to a God-given virtue that was once a distinctive trademark of theirs. This type of blindness seems to go hand in hand with a brazen contempt and a sassy resentfulness towards any attempt to revive and restore the missing sense of modesty.

The fact stands out clearly that the immodest fashions of this unchaste generation still offend Our Lord "very much," as Our Lady foretold it through the angelic little Jacinta.

Anyone who still cares about God's virtue of modesty, which He has made shine with such heavenly beauty in the Immaculate Virgin Mary, cannot forget how Our Lord suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane when He foresaw so many sinners, including the immodest and the impure, remaining unrepentant. And the sight of so many immodest creatures displaying crude flesh, like animals, brings vividly before our mind's eye the frightful vision of Our Divine Savior being mercilessly scourged at the pillar. We need not strain ourselves in trying to picture this scene, for we can plainly see the immodest, with their unchaste displays of flesh and figure, continually scourging Our Lord. And we can see them crowning Him with thorns and nailing Him to the Cross all over again.

And look what sorrow the immodest and the impure are causing their Sorrowful and Immaculate Mother, whom God has presented to them as the Perfect Model of Modesty and Purity!

But it has not all happened by accident. Satan planned it this way. As he has done with such evil movements as Communism and Socialism and Freemasonry, so also has he planned out a program of gradual, not sudden, destruction of the sense of modesty and purity. A mere look at the past 50 years or more shows us very plainly how gradually it was all done, first by apparently innocent abbreviations of garments and by slight revelations of bare flesh and by subtle little displays of the figure, and then, as protests died down, by more and more abbreviations and displays--until the crude immodesty of our day became a shocking reality.

Many living today have seen it all happen before their very eyes. They have lived through it and, if they have managed to retain their God-given moral sense, they find the barbarian immodesty of the this day intolerable and they look upon it as a sin crying to Heaven for the vengeance that must inevitably come if sinners continue to refuse to amend their ways.

Perhaps some 50 years ago or more, a publication known as The Frenchwoman presented the following satanic program for the destruction of the virtue of modesty: "Our children must realize the ideal of nakedness... Thus, the mentality of the child is rapidly transformed. To escape opposition, progress must be methodically graduated: first, feet and legs naked, then upturned sleeves; afterwards, the upper part of the chest; then, the back... n summer, they will go around almost naked."

Even if such a daring statement of the powers of darkness had never come to light--though "enlightened" liberals have tried to keep it in the dark--we would still know that it had to be planned that way and could not have happened by accident. And we would also know that such a program for immodesty could not have originated anywhere but in the dungeons of hell and in the mind of Satan.

The program of gradualism intended to lead eventually to the crude immodesty that we know so painfully well today was evidently drawn up, or at least made known, some time during the Fatima years, possibly a little before or after the 1917 Apparitions of Our Lady. (Maybe some well-informed person can provide a precise date.) Bearing this in mind, we can easily conclude that it was no accident that Our Lady insisted so strongly on modesty in her Fatima Message. She knew well of the evil program that would endanger so many immortal souls, and she came to Fatima to warn souls and to save them from the evil awaiting them.

As Sister Lucy has said, one of the things that Our Lady especially asked for was modesty in dress. And still better known, though disregarded, is Jacinta's prophecy: "Certain fashions will be introduced that will offend Our Lord very much"--that little liked prophecy that leaves immodestly dressed "pious" women and girls callous and insensitive and cold.

Just as Our Lady was commissioned by God to oppose the rise of Russian Communism and all the other evils named in the Fatima Message, with God's own program of sanctification and salvation, so was part of her mission to warn souls of the dangers of immodesty and impurity that were to increase the unbelievable proportions in the years to come, and to turn them to modesty and and purity and amendment of life.

In connection with the timeliness of Our Lady's message of modesty in 1917, just when Satan's program of gradual nakedness was being put into effect, we must also mention the timeliness of the message of modesty of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922). It is fairly well known how dynamic were his two successors, Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, in promoting modesty of dress, but it is not as well known that Pope Benedict XV was before them a strenuous defender and promoter of modesty at a time when we might imagine it was not so much of a problem.

We cannot believe that the statements of Our Lady of Fatima and those of Pope Benedict XV on modesty were disconnected or were merely a matter of coincidence. We can only believe that both Our Lady of Fatima and the Holy Father of that time were inspired and guided by God Himself to speak out on modesty in dress, so as to counteract the wicked program of gradual nudism that was being inspired and guided by hell's father of iniquity.

Let us quote an important statement of Pope Benedict XV--by no means his only one--so that we may see how immodesty in dress had already begun to cause moral ruin among women and girls of his day. In an Encyclical Letter (Sacra Propediem, 1921) commemorating the 7th centenary of the founding of the Franciscan Third Order, Pope Benedict wrote as follows:

"From this point of view one cannot sufficiently deplore the blindness of so many women of every age and condition; made foolish by desire to please, they do not see to what a degree the in decency of their clothing shocks every honest man, and offends God. Most of them would formerly have blushed for those toilettes as for a grave fault against Christian modesty; now it does not suffice for them to exhibit them on the public thoroughfares; they do not fear to cross the threshold of the churches, to assist at the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, and even to bear the seducing food of shameful passions to the Eucharistic Table where one receives the heavenly Author of purity. And We speak not of those exotic and barbarous dances recently imported into fashionable circles, one more shocking than the other; one cannot imagine anything more suitable for banishing all the remains of modesty."

 

If we did not know that a Pope wrote this in 1921, we would surely think it was written, or should have been written by someone, in 1972!

After thus deploring the immodesty of his day, the Holy Father exhorted women with these words:

"In what concerns specially the Tertiary Sisters, We ask of them by their dress and manner of wearing it, to be models of holy modesty for other ladies and young girls; that they be thoroughly convinced that the best way for them to be of use to the Church and to Society is to labor for the improvement of morals."

 

Whose message, do you suppose, have women and girls accepted: the message of modesty of Our Lady of Fatima and of the Holy Father or, the message of immodesty of Lucifer?

Who has recommend to them short skirts, sleeveless dresses, pants, shorts, and clownish pants suits, and so on?

Not only did women and girls buy and buy and buy the clothing that through the years became gradually shorter and skimpier and tighter and ever more unladylike, thus making the whole program of gradual nakedness a huge success, but something else happened at the same time; the sense of modesty and propriety, which God has instilled into their souls, became gradually more blurred and dim and fuzzy, until in so many it became totally blacked out and dead. They did not, and do not, know what happened to them. By blindly and stupidly following the satanic program of gradual abbreviation of attire, they destroyed in themselves a precious God-given gift--the sense of modesty--so that they have now made themselves incapable of distinguishing between modesty and immodesty, nor do so many of them care to know.

And not only have women destroyed in themselves God's gift of modesty, but they have destroyed it in their children from their earliest years, so that a whole generation has been brought up without any real understanding of modesty without any desire to possess its beauty.

And, mind you, these have been "good" and "pious" women who have done this to their children! They have been the "Lord, Lord" type who have duly said their prayers, which all are obliged to do, but who have not done "the Will of My Father Who is in Heaven" (Mt. 7. 21) by obeying His law of modesty. (Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., The Remnant, 1972.)

 

Few such articles or sermons were given in the 1950s. Few such sermons are given today. One priest, whether validly ordained I do not know, in a traditional venue has said that he "couldn't" give such advice as his people would be offended and they would be considered "odd" by their neighbors, to which I responded, "Why bother with rejecting the Novus Ordo and Ratzinger if you are concerned about human respect? You might as well do you obeisance before your local "bishop" and be done with it." Yet others rely upon the "permission" obtained by the American bishops from the Holy See in 1930 for a modified dress code in church, demonstrating a myopic rather than a prophetic view of the Faith and the good of souls. Men and women are thus left to spend their entire lives dressing one way for Holy Mass and another in the popular culture as men feel free to bare their chests and their arms and their legs publicly and women feel free to dress in masculine attire that would never be worn by the Mother of God, who is indeed greatly offended when any woman wears pants (save the exceptions God has ordained, such as Saint Joan of Arc, who dressed as a man upon God's specific instructions so as to preserve her chastity and that of the men under her command).

We are, of course, supposed to learn from the mistakes of the past and acceptance of quarter-length sleeves and dresses or skirts just below the knee fits right into the gradual acceptance of the devil's plan for immodesty that was described by Father Stepanich nearly thirty-seven years ago now. It is this same sort of myopic rather than prophetic view of the Faith that has paralyzed so many Catholics even in fully traditional venues from seeing the utter futility of our electoral system, based upon one abject naturalistic lie after another, from recognizing that no one but no one has a moral obligation to enter into a ballot box to cast a vote for anyone who supports a single abortion, whether chemical or surgical, under cover of law, something that will be discussed yet again briefly in this commentary.

And we tend to forget that the men who were bishops at the time of the conciliar revolution in the 1960s were most willing to relax standards even further than they had been in the past, going on to permit all manner of gross immodesty and indecency in Catholic church buildings during offerings of what purported to be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Compromising the traditional Catholic standards of modesty, summarized by the Cardinal Vicar of Pope Pius XII in 1956 as follows, in 1930 resulted in further compromises in the 1960s an thereafter:

"A dress cannot be called decent which is cut deeper than two fingers breadth under the pit of the throat; which does not cover the arms at least to the elbows; and scarcely reaches a bit beyond the knees.  Furthermore, dresses of transparent materials are improper."  (The Marylike Standards of Modesty)

 

I think that we have abundant proof that the concessions obtained by the American bishops in 1930 were harmful and that it is indeed an act of true pastoral prudence to return to the universal standards of the Catholic Church from which those Americanists sought to exempt their flocks so needlessly.

The 1950s was also not necessarily a "golden" one liturgically as confusion and bewilderment greeted the liturgical changes for Holy Week that were engineered by Fathers Ferdinando Antonelli, O.F.M., and Annibale Bugnini, C.M. Antonelli and Bugnini did not know whether their ultimate goal, the replacement of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church with one more favorably disposed to false ecumenism and Modernism, would or could be realized. However, Giovanni Montini/Paul VI understood full well the trajectory that started in 1951 when he "promulgated" the Novus Ordo abomination on April 3, 1969:

“Since the beginning of this liturgical renewal, it has also become clear that the formularies of the Roman Missal had to be revised and enriched. A beginning was made by Pius XII in the restoration of the Easter Vigil and Holy Week services; he thus took the first step toward adapting the Roman Missal to the contemporary mentality.”  (Roman Missal Destroyed)

 

The "contemporary mentality" is what has devastated the Faith, is it not?

Leaving to pastors of souls decisions concerning the use of the Missal in place at the death of 1958, it is still nevertheless true that the changes wrought by Bugnini and Antonelli in the waning years of Pope Pius XII's reign, much of which was spent convalescing from various illnesses, were revolutionary and were meant to lead to the Novus Ordo as an ultimate result as they accustomed Catholics to novelty and uncertainty as a normal part of liturgical life. And so many priests, men whose training in the liturgy consisted almost exclusively in the study of Canon Law and rubrics, accepted the changes--and those that followed in the 1960s--uncritically, believing that "obedience" required them to accept without using their Catholic reason unprecedented changes to worship that would result in a devastation of the Faith in the souls of so many millions of Catholics as offenses against God have been committed without number and without cease with the advent of the Novus Ordo service forty years ago this year.

The minimalism of Jansenism, always a problem amongst some of the prelates in the United States of America of Irish descent, would lead many good priests to say, "I'm under orders. Who am I to argue if 'headquarters' says it's all right?"

Here is where the various trends during the not-so-"golden" era in the 1950s intersect.

Although it is certainly true that the ethos of the heresy of Americanism had accustomed Catholics in the United States of America to accept and to be influenced by the many, inter-related and insidious influences of naturalism long before the "Second" Vatican Council made its "reconciliation" with the revolutionary principles of 1789, it is also true that the bulwark that kept them from losing their sensus Catholicus entirely was the fact those who belonged to the Roman or Latin Rite worshiped in an atmosphere that was reverent and devout, one that required them to be silent and recollect, one that was, at least for forty-five minutes or an hour or ninety minutes, a refuge from the world rather than an enshrinement of the world and its false values. All such restraints fell away with the introduction of the Novus Ordo service as it denied Sanctifying Grace to unsuspecting Catholics, thus opening them up to be more and more accepting of cultural and political and social trends that deviated from the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and Its infallible explication.

Although the United States of America was founded on false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles and had been set on a path of degeneration thereby (see It's Still a World of Sisyphuses as well as the excerpts from Orestes Brownson's "National Greatness" that are included in Figures of Antichrist), the graces made available by the offerings of Holy Mass by thousands upon thousands of priests in this country retarded this process of degeneration somewhat.

The absence of such graces in the past nearly forty years (I have just realized that this year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Novus Ordo!--oh, can you imagine the elegies of praise that will be offered by the conciliar Vatican!) has permitted the floodgates of the world to overwhelm Catholics and non-Catholics alike in a figurative tsunami. The false premises of the American founding, which so many Catholic moral theologians and Catholic authors of textbooks on American government refused to see and accept, demonstrated themselves to be but prophetic precursors of the counterfeit church of conciliarism's own view of Church-State relations.

Yes, just as many Catholic priests in the United States of America did not see the harm of television or "rock music" or the gradual change of men's and women's fashions as they accepted the truly revolutionary changes of Holy Week without much reflection or study, so is it the case that those who wrote textbooks and moral theology manuals on civics and voting did not see the inherent harm of the American founding and accepted its "political ecumenism," if you will, as perfectly compatible with, if not actually beneficial to, the Catholic Church and its role in a pluralistic society.

You will not find in any of these textbooks the critical and authentically Catholic insights into the falsehoods of the American founding that one can find in Mr. Hugh Akins's recently reprinted No King But Caesar and Monsignor Henri Delassus's Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy and Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers (each available from Catholic Action Resource Center). None of these textbooks and or manuals in moral theology referenced Pope Saint Pius X's injunction in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, that the thesis of the separation of Church and State was "absolutely false" or that the Catholic Church had an absolute right to be recognized by the civil state as the true religion. These authors of the 1950s and before accepted uncritically--and to a man--the false premises of the American founding as compatible with the Faith and presented as absolutely obligatory participation in this fraudulent political system without any qualifications or conditions whatsoever. (Even Pope Pius XII's allocutions on voting contained qualifications and conditions that must be judged and assessed in concrete circumstances.)

Obviously, this is nothing new. A book published by the Christian Brothers in 1913 contained the following section after describing the martyrdom of Saint Felicitas and her seven sons:

"In this country of ours we will not be called upon, like these seven noble boys to give up our life for our Faith. The children of American are living in a land of civil and religious liberty, and not in Rome under pagan emperors. There is not here, and there never will be, any law to hinder us from making open profession of what we believe, to prevent us from declaring our belief in God, the Father, Creator, of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord."

 

Never? Ever? At any time? Can you see the influence of the mythology produced by Americanism? Never? Exalting the concepts of "civil and religious liberty" that had been condemned by Popes Pius VII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X, to name just a few. Were the Christian Brothers (whose book, a reader for elementary school students, quoted the thirty-third degree Freemason Theodore Roosevelt, who was speaking in purely naturalistic terms, to amplify a point made by Saint Paul!) responsible for this book ignorant of these words contained in Pope Pius VII's Post Tam Diuturnas, April 28, 1814:

For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me."

 

One of the "experts" cited by Americanists in in the 1950s behalf of the American governmental and political system was none other than Monsignor John Ryan, an unabashed supporter of the ideology of liberalism who demagogically denounced the courageous and prophetic Father Charles Coughlin in a national radio address on October 8, 1936, entitled "Roosevelt Safeguards America." Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a thirty-third degree Mason who built upon the statism of his fifth cousin (whom he did not like), Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Clark Hoover to create the modern welfare state and who trust the "good intentions" of Joseph Stalin during World War II, "safeguarded" America. Monsignor Ryan disagreed with some of Roosevelt's population policies. That did not, however, prevent him from supporting him for re-election to a third and fourth term in, respectively, 1940 and 1944 or from giving the invocation at Roosevelt's last inauguration on January 20, 1945. Sort of sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Yes, good readers, Monsignor John Ryan, cited as an "expert" on the morally obligatory nature of participating in the Judeo-Masonic farce that is American electoral politics is a poster-child writ large for the influence of Americanism on the psyche of even learned Catholic priests. The late Monsignor Ryan accepted the American constitutional system, including religious liberty, as perfectly compatible with the Faith and praised statists such as Franklin Roosevelt, going so far as to enable their political careers in the process in the name of "social justice." Monsignor Ryan was, of course, merely carrying on the "tradition" of such past Americanists as John Lancaster Spalding and Richard Kenrick and Francis Purcell and John Ireland and James Gibbons, men who believed that the future upward mobility of Catholic immigrants hinged upon their attached to and voting for the Democrat Party as they championed American "values" such as public education, religious liberty, majoritarianism and "free speech."

The strain of Monsignor Ryan's school of Americanism saw the Democrat Party as the chief, although certainly not entirely perfect, vehicle for the realizing of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891. This was but a delusional projection of the Faith into the minds of career politicians who were hostile to It and desired to increase the size and the scope of the Federal government at the expense of the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity, something that Father Coughlin, an early supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's, himself began to realize and then denounced courageously and in no uncertain terms. This strain of Americanism is still at work in the minds of hearts of many Catholics attached to the conciliar structures who see the Democrat Party in general and  President-elect Barack Hussein Obama in particular as the means to realize "social justice" in our own day. Too bad that the Democrat Party and Obama believe in the nonexistent "right" of "privacy" for women to "choose" to kill their children, whether by chemical or surgical means, under cover of law. Too bad. The "party" has the answers. The "ballot box" is how we improve the world. Too bad for the babies. Too bad.

Although it would be unjust to the late Monsignor Ryan to claim that he would support Catholics of either major organized crime family of naturalism in the United States of America, the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, who were in favor of the "legal" right to kill babies under cover of law, he did lay aside his disagreements with Franklin Roosevelt and other New Dealers on population matters to render his full-throated support at election time, which is why Ryan was given the nickname, "The Right Reverend New Dealer." It is certainly just to point out that he was an exemplar of a long tradition among Catholics to see the Democrat Party as their natural electoral "home" It is also just point out that he believed what was taught in parochial schools in this country right up to the "Second" Vatican Council and thereafter, that Catholicism and the American founding were virtually one and the same thing. The fact that some of those who succeeded Ryan, who died in 1945, took up the cause of pro-abortion Catholics in the Democrat Party certainly speaks to the overall harm of pluralism on the Faith and to the specific accommodations that men like Ryan made over and over again as they sought so demagogically to silence the voices of true Catholic Social Teaching that were raised by Father Charles Coughlin and others.

Indeed, like all heresies, Americanism, which was so much in vogue in the 1950s and still has currency in many full traditional Catholic venues, splinters itself over the course of time.

The "social justice" strand supportive of the role of large government in the redistribution of income and of massive bureaucracies to "engineer" the better society that was championed by Monsignor Ryan has had latter day champions such as the late Joseph "Cardinal" Bernardin, the late Francis Mugavero and his "auxiliary" in Brooklyn, Joseph Sullivan, John "Cardinal" Dearden, Roger "Cardinal" Mahony, Raymond Hunthausen, Joseph Imesch, Howard Hubbard, Rembert Weakland, Peter Rosazza, Peter Leo Gerety, Thomas Gumbleton, the late Fathers Robert Drinan, S.J., the late Richard McCormick, S.J., the very much alive Richard McBrien, the late John Courtney Murray, S.J., and the late Monsignor George Higgins, to name just a very few. Some of these individuals were involved in John Dearden's radical "Call to Action" group. Others, especially the anonymous apparatchiks in the organization that was spawned in Monsignor John Ryan's lifetime as the National Catholic Welfare Committee and has become the monstrous United States Conference of "Catholic" "Bishops," have used Catholic Charities and/or the now-named "Catholic" Campaign for Human Development to promote the leftist strand of naturalism that is but a logical consequence of a Constitution that does not recognize and submit to the authority of the Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls as the civil government seeks to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End.

As can be seen from an article in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal, the "social justice" strand of Americanism to which Monsignor Ryan, whose work was quoted so widely in the 1950s in various Catholic moral theology texts on such matters of voting, belonged was responsible for helping to craft a strategy for the Kennedy clan to support surgical abortion under cover of law while retaining their fictional claim to be "good" Catholics in their personal lives. Influential in devising this strategy was none other than the writings of Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., the father of Dignitatis Humanae, which embraced the Americanist heresy of "religious liberty," thereby directly contradicting Pope Pius VI, Pope Pius VI, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Saint Pius X and even Pope Pius XII in Ci Riesce, December 6, 1953. Murray had no intention of restoring the confessionally Catholic civil state. He was intent on propagandizing in behalf of Americanism. So is Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

Here are a few excerpts from that Wall Street Journal article:

In some cases, church leaders actually started providing "cover" for Catholic pro-choice politicians who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."

The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book "The Birth of Bioethics" (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.

Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that "distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue." It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians "might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order."

Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: "The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion." (WSJ.com - Opinion: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma.)

 

Behold the rotten fruit of the separation of Church and State and religious liberty in the constitution of a religiously indifferentist state. Catholics, as Pope Leo XIII warned in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, stood the chance of being coopted by pluralism into viewing the Church through the eyes of the world rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the Faith:

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state.

 

Current Catholic enablers of Barack Hussein Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., a baptized Catholic, such as Douglas Kmiec make arguments quite similar to those related by Father Giles Milhaven in 1984 at the Catholics for "Free Choice" meeting, that a "Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion," thus spitting in the face of Pope Leo XIII's injunction to the contrary in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue.

 

Alas, those who accept the naturalist premises of the American founding become, gee whiz, naturalists who find their "salvation" in the civil state and in whichever political party cleaves to the the leftist strand of naturalism.

The other strand of the Americanist heresy attempts to oppose the evils excused by the social justice strand of leftism by making advertence to, guess what, the "genius" of the American Constitution, placing their hopes time and time again in phony pro-life politicians who are themselves statists and who support the slicing and dicing of the innocent preborn at least in one or more of the "hard" cases and who almost to a man (and woman) support the chemical assassination of children by means of various pills and devices. Some of these individuals, such as Ratzinger/Benedict himself, believe that the pluralist state is "irreversible" (thereby denigrating the efficacy of the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces), and that the "best" the Church can hope for is a "place" at the "table" in the "marketplace of ideas, rejecting in principle the necessity of praying and working for the restoration of the confessionally Catholic state.

Both strands of Americanism lead to social chaos. The leftist strand enables overt enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to obtain elected office and pursue policies inimical to His greater honor and glory and thus to the good of souls for whom He gave up His life on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. Let me see here, Barack Hussein Obama and his apostate Catholic running-mate got fifty-four percent of popular vote on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, is this not correct? Pro-aborts get elected all of the time in states with large Catholic populations (Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Vermont, New Mexico, California, Illinois, New Hampshire, Arizona). This is not an accident. This is not an anomaly. This is the result of the leftist strand of Americanist naturalism.

The constitutionalist--or "rightist"--strand of Americanism, on the other hand, convinces well-intentioned Catholics that the evils of the day can be retarded by political ecumenism, which is as abjectly false as theological ecumenism. Nothing except sacrilege and blasphemy and apostasy has emerged from theological ecumenism. Nothing but wasted time and money and effort has resulted from election after election after election after election. What is done by "conservatives" one term can be undone by "liberals" the next term as evils get more and more institutionalized with each passing Congress and each passing presidential administration. And thus it must ever be in a system based upon false premises. This wasn't seen clearly in the 1940s and 1950s. Fine. We see it now. Insanity is defined, after all, as doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results.

We're not in Kansas any more, my friends. It's not the 1950s. Not many of the authors in those old Catholic civics books, many of which were emblazoned with "old glory" (whose origins were critiqued superbly by His Excellency Bishop Donald A. Sanborn in The Cult of Liberty), would have agreed that Pope Saint Pius X's simple reiteration of the eternally binding truths of Catholic Social Teaching contained in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, applied to the United States of America:

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."

 

We are supposed to learn things from the past. And one of the things that a believing Catholic should have learned by now is that Americanism was one of the chief cornerstone of conciliarism, containing within itself some of the most important constituent elements of the apostasies that have been promoted by conciliar "popes" in the past five decades ("religious liberty," "separation of Church and State," ecumenism). One is welcome to live like Sisyphus and attempt to roll boulders up hills as he does the bidding of careerists in our organized crime families of naturalism. Others, however, are invited to use their Catholic reason and to recognize that moral judgments concerning whether to vote or for whom to vote must be made in light of the concrete circumstances of the moment and after a considered judgment of the governing principles concerning the rational good to be accomplished, as I noted one year ago this month in When Lesser is Greater, whose text I stand behind now just as firmly as I did when it was published.

The priests who served as cheerleaders and apologists for the American "way" back in the 1950s have been proved wrong. They did not bring the body of Catholic Social Teaching to bear on a critical examination of the false premises of the American founding. Indeed, some engaged in rank intellectual dishonesty by attempting to "read" Catholicism into the anti-Catholic minds of the founders, something that I have tried to refute over and over again on this site. The founding of this nation was the consequence of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry. Whatever attenuated influences the Faith had in the founding were filtered through the strainer provided by Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, including, of course, so-called "Enlightenment" thought (please see excerpts of Dr. John C. Rao's "Founding Fathers vs. Church Fathers--666-0, found in No Better than the Chicoms).

Others, including Dr. Rao and Mr. Hugh Akins, have studied the entire corpus of the Church's Social Teaching. The work of such disciples of Christ the King has helped to strip the scales of nationalistic pride from our eyes so that we can see more clearly the self-delusional projections that were made by the well-meaning scholars of the past, men who could not foresee the demographic trends that have, along with conciliarism, helped to produce a nation of neo-barbarians who live almost exclusively for various sense-pleasures and who cast their votes accordingly. The writers of the 1940s and the 1950s could not have imagined that the Faith could have been lost as quickly as it was in the souls of so many scores of millions of Catholics. They could not imagine an electorate that is, humanly speaking, absolutely irredeemably lost in the mire of naturalism and that the more the naturalistic agents called political parties are enabled would the more that naturalism would prevail in the minds and the hearts and the souls of Catholics.

Although these priests may have been perfectly orthodox in other areas, it is this area of Church-State relations that has been the weakest link in the life of the Church in the United States of America from the very beginning. Accepting the false premises of the American founding as being perfectly compatible to the Faith, these priests were thus as derelict in their duties to teach the Faith as others were in the 1950s who kept silent about television or "rock music" or the mania of sports (please listen to Father Charles McGuire's Agony and Contention in Sports) or immodesty, especially the wretched phenomenon of women wearing masculine attire. Generations upon generations of Catholics were thus deformed as a result. I was one of them for the first thirty or so years of my life.

The Catholic authors of the 1940s and 1950s who believed in the ability of elections and voting to "change" the course of events for the better (or to prevent a "greater evil' from acquiring power) probably did not think that what Pope Pius XI wrote in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, about the nature of political contests at the beginning of the third decade of the Twentieth Century applied to the "enlightened" United States of America, if, that is, they had read the encyclical letter at all:

To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives. These political struggles also beget threats of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of government. Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another.

What I wrote nearly four months ago in Every Error Imaginable is again relevant:

The distraction offered by electoral politics forces many people on both sides of the false opposites of the naturalist spectrum to subordinate their most deeply held naturalistic beliefs in order to achieve some short-term goal. As I have noted before, those who want to believe in the utility of a system based in falsehoods can proceed as they wish. Just check back in another four years to see what kind of hysteria is being whipped up then after social conditions have continued to deteriorate and as babies are being killed by means of chemical and surgical abortions then at the same rate that they are being killed today.

 

In the meantime, however, it is not being "uninvolved" in civic affairs to seek to help others to see the world more clearly through the eyes of the true Faith. It is not doing "nothing" to pray as many Rosaries of reparation each day as our states-in-life permit. It is not doing "nothing" to distributed blessed Green Scapulars and blessed Rosaries with instruction booklets to those whom God's Holy Providence places in our paths every day.

We can plant the seeds for the restoration of Christendom, after, of course, attending to the daily needs of our our immortal souls, staring with assisting at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered by true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, by doing simple things for souls. Saint Peter Claver, whose feast we celebrate today, did the simplest and most profound thing for souls imaginable: he baptized them into the very inner life of the Blessed Trinity. Over 300,000 with his own priestly hands! We can distribute blessed Green Scapulars and Rosaries, can we not?

 

The first Christendom was not built at the ballot box. A new Christendom will not, contrary to what I myself argued, at least in part, ten years ago, by electoral means. No, Christendom will be restored as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which Triumph requires us to fulfill as best we can Our Lady's Fatima Message every day in our own homes and to use the shield of her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and the weapon of her Most Holy Rosary without looking for results and without being anxious at all about the difficulties of the present moment.

Perhaps it is useful once again to quote Our Lady's words to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in 1531:

Know for certain that I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God. . . . Here I will show and offer my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of all those who love me, of those who cry to me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping and their sorrows and will remedy and alleviate their suffering, necessities and misfortunes. . . . Listen and let it penetrate into your heart. . . . Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. So not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else that you need?

 

Every error imaginable is on display in our daily encounters with people who are clueless about First and Last Things. Every error imaginable will be wiped away when the Triumph of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart is made manifest.

 

Remember these words from Pope Saint Pius X's Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, and remember them well:

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. . . .  For there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Turn the clock back to the "good old days" of the 1950s, good readers, and you will wind up back here in the year 2009 sooner or later. We must not revert to the minimalism of the 1950s. We must not revert to the jingoistic, reflexive nationalism of the 1950s that is a perversion of true patriotism. We must not revert to the fashions of the 1950s that began to make their compromises with modesty and decency. We must not revert to a lifestyle of television and diabolical music and sports that shaped so many homes in the 1950s. We must live and breathe and think and, most importantly, pray as Catholics who make no compromises at all with the spirit of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The world is God's enemy, as Father Frederick Faber noted in The Dolors of Mary/The Foot of the Cross. We must give the world no quarter at all as we seek to follow Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother, which Immaculate Heart we honor today, the First Saturday of the year, January 3, 2009, the Octave Day of Saint John the Evangelist and the Commemoration of the patron saint of once-Catholic France, Saint Genevieve.

Saint Genevieve, who embraced a life of great austerity, helped to turn back Attila the Hun by encouraging the people of Paris to pray and to fast. It worked. Maybe we, the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, ought to try this in the United States of America as we flee from conciliarism and its false shepherds and as we pray as man Rosaries each day as our states in life permit.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, 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 Genevieve, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't time to pray a Rosary now?