WinningNationsforChristtheKing

To wit, I was one of millions of Catholics back on October 16, 1978, who thought that the dark night of the Church represented by the pontificate of Paul VI was over. The beacon of hope had come from Poland in the form of Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, who set an agenda within a week of his ostensible elevation to the papacy that tickled ears of those of us who were "conservative" Catholics in the conciliar structures eager for someone to restore order in the Church. After all, dissenters populated teaching positions in universities and colleges and seminaries and professional schools. Liturgical abuses were proliferating on an almost daily basis. So many of us, myself included, believed that John Paul II was going to restore the Church and correct the "abuses" associated with the Second Vatican Council.

As one trained in the Baltimore Catechism as a child at Saint Aloysius School in Great Neck, New York, from 1956 to 1962, I knew the basics of the Faith, desiring with all of my heart to use my college teaching career as a means of helping my non-Catholic students to embrace the true Faith and my Catholic students who did not practice the Faith or who did not understand it to see in Holy Mother Church their mater and magister. It was my expectation in 1978 that John Paul II would provide reinforcement of basic Catholic truths with a sense of clarity and certainty, starting with the removal of bad bishops and the appointment of truly Catholic bishops, men who would then rid Catholic educational and health and charitable institutions of dissenters. I projected into the mind and heart of John Paul II my own fondest hopes for the restoration of the Church.

It took a deliberate act of self-deception on my part to ignore John Paul II's early support for the ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council and Paul VI. It took repeated acts of self-deception on my part to believe that "things" were going to change for the better. I did not realize that Karol Josef Wojtyla was a progenitor of the Second Vatican Council who would use his pontificate to further institutionalize conciliarism's novelties, to say nothing of fomenting even more novelties and blasphemies as the years progressed. My repeated acts of self-deception really did not cease until "permission" was granted for "altar girls" in April of 1994.

Although still recognizing John Paul II as pope and quoting those things of his that I thought were useful to defend the Catholic Faith in the secular world, I became more jaded in my view of his pontificate and more willing to examine the simple truth that I had imagined a "hero" who was actually a major actor in the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions that has devastated the Faith of so many countless numbers of souls around the world. Sadly, it is the case today that large numbers of Catholics refuse to look at the evidence of this devastation, preferring to believe that our situation is not as bad as it actually is and/or that John Paul II was badly advised by those around him and could not be held responsible for the chaos in the conciliar structures.

Similarly, so many Catholics projected their own fondest hopes and desires into the minds and the hearts of "conservative" Republican politicians over the years, suspending rational judgment in the process. I had held out some hope that the election of Ronald Wilson Reagan and a number of seemingly "pro-life" senators on November 4, 1980, actually meant that we had "turned the corner" on abortion. Once Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, who had a thorough-going pro-abortion record as the Majority Leader of the Arizona State Senate, to replace retiring Associate Justice Potter Stewart in 1981, however, I knew that my initial hopes were not well-founded. I have spent the past twenty-five years trying to point out the continuous Republican betrayal of their stated "pro-life" objectives, much to the consternation of loads and loads of people who do not want to examine honest-to-goodness facts dispassionately.

There is no need here to repeat once again the numerous betrayals committed by Republican administrations against the cause of restoring legal protection to the innocent preborn in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. I did this at length in The Wanderer, in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos from 1996 to 2003, in The Remnant, Catholic Family News, Celebrate Life, and even in one issue of The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture in late-2001, also doing so in my various campaigns for public office on the now defunct Right to Life Party of the State of New York. Each of the three volumes of Restoring Christ as the King of All Nations contains articles documenting this betrayal. The irrefutable facts of the Republican betrayal of pro-life principles matters little, however, to people who want to ignore such facts, to people who believe that there is some inter-denominational or non-denominational, secular, religiously-indifferentist way in which the prevailing evils of the day will be ameliorated.

Thus it is, you see, that there are still Catholics who continue to believe in the utter mythology of President George W. Bush as a "pro-life" president and who are prone to give him the benefit of the doubt concerning the unmitigated disaster that he fomented in Iraq, a disaster that has needlessly killed and maimed our own American military personnel, cost the lives of thousands upon thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens, destablized the Middle East, and turned Iraq into a haven for Mohammedan terrorists as the taxpayers of this country foot the bill for the Wilsonian delusion of "peace through the spread of American civil liberty" and for doing the bidding of our politicians' Zionist paymasters and puppeteers. Yes, there are some Catholics who have yet to come to grips with the fact that the "pro-life" President, who supports baby-killing in "hard cases" and whose administration promotes chemical abortifacients by means of domestic and international "family planning programs," has been correct to fight the mythical "War on Terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is nothing other than self-delusion writ large.

One of the many deceptions of the era of Modernity--and one of the many consequences of the Protestant Revolt--has been the rise of nationalism, which has burgeoned into a gigantic exercise in the idolatry of the mythologies associated with a particular nation and/or ethnicity. Nationalism and patriotism are not the same things. And it is important for these two concepts to be distinguished in order to understand how many Catholics are continuing to confuse the two in the aftermath of everything that the Bush Administration has done since the events of September 11, 2001.

As I have noted so frequently in the past fifteen years, a Catholic is called to love his country. However, one's love for country is premised upon willing its good. And the ultimate good of any nation is her Catholicization, which involves her total subordination to the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the authority of His true Church on matters of faith and morals and on matters of fundamental justice founded in the splendor of Truth Incarnate. A nation that is founded on the specific and categorical rejection of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ and the authority of His true Church is bound to degenerate over the course of time to the point of being susceptible to decay from within and attacks from without. Pope Leo XIII noted this in his great encyclical letter on the State, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

"A well-spent life is the only passport to Heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and the dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the power of making laws, from the training of youth, from domestic society, is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is know of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be note carried out in action."

To point this out is not to express hatred for one's country. The plain fact of the matter is that the United States of America was founded in the wake of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Freemasonry. Although there was a surface veneer of Protestant Christianity extant in its popular culture at the time of the Founding, therein lies the problem. Protestantism of its nature rejects the authority of a visible, hierarchical Church which has been entrusted by the God-Man to direct all men and their civil societies until the end of time. Although the Church teaches that men are free to choose whatever specific institutional arrangements they deem appropriate, she teaches also that men must arrange their civil governments to take cognizance of the subordination of all civil and social life to the power of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ exercised by the Supreme Pontiff and those bishops in full communion with him.

For example, just as being in a state of Sanctifying or Habitual Grace is the necessary precondition for true personal happiness here in this vale of tears and for eternal happiness in Heaven, so is the Social Kingship of Christ the necessary precondition for the right ordering of the civil life of men and their nations. Being in a state of grace at one moment in life is no guarantee that a person will persevere in such a state until the moment of death. We must work out our salvation in fear and in trembling. Similarly, a recognition of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ is no guarantee that fundamental justice founded in the truth of man's First and Last End will be pursued consistently over the course of time. Nevertheless, both are the necessary requisites for the good of souls individually and collectively, which is why we must be assiduous to grow in sanctity personally and vigilant in defending the rights of Christ the King and His true Church socially.

So society in its foolhardy effort to escape from God has rejected the Divine order and Revelation; and it is thus withdrawn from the salutary efficacy of Christianity which is manifestly the most solid guarantee of order, the strongest bond of fraternity, and the inexhaustible source of all public and private virtue. This sacrilegious divorce has resulted in bringing about the trouble which now disturbs the world. Hence it is the pale of the Church which this lost society must re-enter, if it wishes to recover its well-being, its repose, and its salvation.

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely wise, good, and just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine Assistance and of that immortality which has been promised It, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which It has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect It in Its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the Teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal Itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of Justice and Charity, and the Propagator as well as the Guardian of True Liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the True Limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of Truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of Justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity.

A nation that promotes evil under cover of law and within every aspect of its popular culture makes itself more vulnerable to attacks from terrorists who have no more regard for the sanctity of innocent lives living within a country deemed to be their enemy than that nation has for the innocents it puts to death under cover of law. To point this out is far from a violation of the patriotism required by the natural law. Indeed, would a citizen of Nazi Germany or of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have been guilty of a lack of patriotism for pointing out how the evil perpetrated by these terrorist states made those states unworthy of defense? Were the precepts of love of country explicated by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica violated by citizens of dictatorships who criticized the evils perpetrated under cover of law? Are citizens who refuse to engage in the military defense of a nation guilty of crimes against innocent life within its own borders similarly guilty of a lack of patriotism? That is, to oppose our government's unjust and evil policies, both foreign and domestic, is the ultimate act of patriotism as we are seeking to defend the fact that God's laws--as He has deposited them exclusively in the Catholic Church for their safekeeping and infallible explication--are supreme over the designs of fallen men to try to remake the world in their own warped images.

As Pope Leo XIII noted in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890, we are citizens of the Church before we are citizens of a particular nation. And it is because of our heavenly citizenship that we are obligated to resist unjust laws and to refuse to cooperate with civil authorities who try to enforce those laws:

It cannot be doubted that duties more numerous and of greater moment devolve on Catholics than upon such as are either not sufficiently enlightened in relation to the Catholic faith, or who are entirely unacquainted with its doctrines. Considering that forthwith upon salvation being brought out for mankind, Jesus Christ laid upon His Apostles the injunction to "preach the Gospel to every creature," He imposed, it is evident, upon all men the duty of learning thoroughly and believing what they were taught. This duty is intimately bound up with the gaining of eternal salvation: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be condemned." But the man who has embraced the Christian faith, as in duty bound, is by that very fact a subject of the Church as one of the children born of her, and becomes a member of that greatest and holiest body, which it is the special charge of the Roman Pontiff to rule with supreme power, under its invisible head, Jesus Christ.

Now, if the natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his native land, very much more is it the urgent duty of Christians to be ever quickened by like feelings toward the Church. For the Church is the holy City of the living God, born of God Himself, and by Him built up and established. Upon this earth, indeed, she accomplishes her pilgrimage, but by instructing and guiding men she summons them to eternal happiness. We are bound, then, to love dearly the country whence we have received the means of enjoyment this mortal life affords, but we have a much more urgent obligation to love, with ardent love, the Church to which we owe the life of the soul, a life that will endure forever. For fitting it is to prefer the good of the soul to the well-being of the body, inasmuch as duties toward God are of a far more hallowed character than those toward men.

Moreover, if we would judge aright, the supernatural love for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from the same eternal principle, since God Himself is their Author and originating Cause. Consequently, it follows that between the duties they respectively enjoin, neither can come into collision with the other. We can, certainly, and should love ourselves, bear ourselves kindly toward our fellow men, nourish affection for the State and the governing powers; but at the same time we can and must cherish toward the Church a feeling of filial piety, and love God with the deepest love of which we are capable. The order of precedence of these duties is, however, at times, either under stress of public calamities, or through the perverse will of men, inverted. For, instances occur where the State seems to require from men as subjects one thing, and religion, from men as Christians, quite another; and this in reality without any other ground, than that the rulers of the State either hold the sacred power of the Church of no account, or endeavor to subject it to their own will. Hence arises a conflict, and an occasion, through such conflict, of virtue being put to the proof. The two powers are confronted and urge their behests in a contrary sense; to obey both is wholly impossible. No man can serve two masters, for to please the one amounts to contemning the other.

As to which should be preferred no one ought to balance for an instant. It is a high crime indeed to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men, an act of consummate wickedness to break the laws of Jesus Christ, in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers, or, under pretext of keeping the civil law, to ignore the rights of the Church; "we ought to obey God rather than men." This answer, which of old Peter and the other Apostles were used to give the civil authorities who enjoined unrighteous things, we must, in like circumstances, give always and without hesitation. No better citizen is there, whether in time of peace or war, than the Christian who is mindful of his duty; but such a one should be ready to suffer all things, even death itself, rather than abandon the cause of God or of the Church.

A nation has the natural law right to defend itself, being careful to observe the conditions summarized in the Just War Theory (the existence of a real and imminent threat from an aggressor, the exhaustion of all peaceful means to resolve a dispute short of the use of armed force, a prudential judgment made concerning the reasonable chance for the success of the use of such armed force in the pursuit of a legitimate end for the prosecution of justice and restoration of order, the proportionality of the good end sought in light of the foreseen evil to be done by the use of armed force, all reasonable steps taken to assure the safety of non-combatants, and the cessation of armed conflict as soon as possible). Indeed, a nation has the duty to defend itself and its citizens and to bring to justice those responsible for criminal acts committed by foreign invaders or terrorists. Catholics are not pacifists. However, no amount of armed force is going to secure a nation which is itself acts terroristically against its own innocent citizens and which promotes the evils of contraception and sterilization here and around the world. It is delusional to think that the United States is going to "eradicate" its enemies abroad when it has made itself an enemy of Christ the King and Blessed Mary our Immaculate Queen by its embrace of the very evils that caused Our Lord to suffer once on the wood of the Cross and which wound His Mystical Body, the Church, today: sin. As I note so frequently, it is one thing to sin and to seek out the mercy of Christ in the confessional. It is quite another to persist in sin unrepentantly, worse yet to promote it under cover of law as a civil right and to export it abroad by means of international aid programs.

To wit, Secretary of State Colin Powell used the swearing-in ceremony on September 18, 2001, of the then newly appointed American ambassador to Romania, a homosexual, to introduce the man's homosexual "partner." His successor, Condoleeza Rice, did the exact same thing just this past week when she introduced the new head of the "global AIDS" program and his sodomite partner, doing so in the full view and with the approval of the First Lady, Mrs. Laura Bush. Abortion and sodomy are two of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Do we really think God is pleased with the United States? Do we really think that we are immune from the same currents which brought down the Roman Empire, currents which were described in very graphic terms by Saint Augustine in The City of God? No mythical "War on Terror" will save a nation that continues to make war upon God and His immutable laws, which bind all men in all places at all times and in all circumstances, admitting of no exception whatsoever.

While we pray for the safety of our troops and of our nation, we must nevertheless remind ourselves constantly that the only sure foundation for peace is to be found in Christ the King and Mary our Queen. The only sure formula to defeat the terrorism of our ancient Adversary is to follow Our Lady's Fatima peace plan. We ignore that plan at our own peril.

Pope Pius XI put the matter of the Peace of Christ the Kingdom of Christ this way in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio:

The only remedy for such state of affairs is the peace of Christ since the peace of Christ is the peace of God, which could not exist if it did not enjoin respect for law, order, and the rights of authority. In the Holy Scriptures We read: "My children, keep discipline in peace." (Ecclesiasticus xli, 17) "Much peace have they that love the law, O Lord." (Psalms cxviii, 165) "He that feareth the commandment, shall dwell in peace." (Proverbs xiii, 13) Jesus Christ very expressly states: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." (Matt. xxii, 21) He even recognized that Pilate possessed authority from on High (John xiv, 11) as he acknowledged that the scribes and Pharisees who though unworthy sat in the chair of Moses (Matt. xxiii, 2) were not without a like authority. In Joseph and Mary, Jesus respected the natural authority of parents and was subject to them for the greater part of His life. (Luke ii, 51) He also taught, by the voice of His Apostle, the same important doctrine: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God." (Romans xiii, 1; cf. also 1 Peter ii, 13, 18)

If we stop to reflect for a moment that these ideals and doctrines of Jesus Christ, for example, his teachings on the necessity and value of the spiritual life, on the dignity and sanctity of human life, on the duty of obedience, on the divine basis of human government, on the sacramental character of matrimony and by consequence the sanctity of family life -- if we stop to reflect, let Us repeat, that these ideals and doctrines of Christ (which are in fact but a portion of the treasury of truth which He left to mankind) were confided by Him to His Church and to her alone for safekeeping, and that He has promised that His aid will never fail her at any time for she is the infallible teacher of His doctrines in every century and before all nations, there is no one who cannot clearly see what a singularly important role the Catholic Church is able to play, and is even called upon to assume, in providing a remedy for the ills which afflict the world today and in leading mankind toward a universal peace.

Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.

Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)

Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.

It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.

It is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned after the authority of God, the Father, from Whom, as a matter of fact, it originates and after which even it is named. (Ephesians iii, 15) The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth, and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy Family. Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble all who live up to its demands. Christ reigns where the position in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized, for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain, must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense that she should abstract in the least from their authority, each in its own sphere supreme, but that she should really perfect their authority, just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain promoters of their happiness here below.

It is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ -- "the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ." It is no less unquestionable that, in doing all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom, we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose glorious life of suffering and mystical revelations we celebrate liturgically today, October 17 in the calendar of Tradition, was given a specific request by Our Lord Himself for the entirety of France to be consecrated to His Most Sacred Heart. King Louis XIV and the bishops of France refused, choosing instead to consecrate only the City of Parish to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The date? July 14, 1689, one hundred years to the day prior to the storming of the Bastille. The inability of so many Catholics today to see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith and thus to pray and work for the restoration of Christendom is the consequence of a similar infidelity to a Heavenly message, this one being, of course, Our Lady's Fatima Message.

The infidelity to Our Lady's Fatima Message has been coupled with conciliarism's own "reconciliation" with the very principles of 1789 that have helped to shed so much blood in the past 217 years. Conciliarism eschews the doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ King, specifically and categorically disclaiming any role at all for the Catholic Church insofar as being formally recognized as the official religion of each and every nation on earth. (See, for example, Benedict XVI's embrace of the secular state in Deus Caritas Est.) We are thus left at the mercy of petty secular tyrants in ostensibly "republican" (representative) regimes who believe that we, the citizens, exist to enable them to pick our pockets as they promote evils at home and abroad.

One of the antidotes we can use in our own family lives to counteract the poisons of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the conciliar church is to Enthrone the Sacred Heart of Jesus in our homes. I noted this four months ago on the occasion of the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I want to reiterate this again on the feast of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. Even though we appear to be a long way from the day when Christendom will be restored in the world as one of the signal fruits of the Triumph of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, we can usher in Christendom in our homes by enthroning the Sacred Heart of Jesus in them and by being totally consecrated to His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart, out of which His Most Sacred Heart was formed in her virginal and immaculate womb.

We need not wait for the glories of a new Christendom to live Christendom in every aspect of our own lives. We can let the pulse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary give a supernatural vibrancy to our every thought, word and deed. We can let the ineffable love of these twin hearts help us to see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith, refusing to be victimized any longer by our own acts of willful self-deception. We can show forth our love for Jesus and Mary by meditating on the mysteries of the salvation they wrought for us in our daily family Rosaries. We may not be able to stop Modernity in nation-states and Modernism in the conciliar church. We can, however, by the graces won for us on Calvary and that flow to us through the loving hands of Our Lady, create "safe houses" where Catholicism is practiced without any concessions to Modernity and/or Modernism. We can help to plant the seeds when all nations will be won for Christ the King and for Mary our Immaculate Queen.

May Our Lady of the Rosary continue to help us in this month of October to refuse to practice self-deception, whether ecclesiastical or civil, and to pray and to work and to do penance and to make sacrifice for the day when Christendom is restored in the world and Tradition is restored in the Church.

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil. Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven. That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels. Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory. That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity. These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered. Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen.

Verse: Let us pray. O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls.

Winning Nations for Christ the King and Mary our

Immaculate Queen

by Thomas A. Droleskey


© Copyright 2006, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.