Lawless and Rootless

“The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil,' separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.”

Pope Leo XIII put the matter very clearly in the opening paragraph of his encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus , in 1884. If the civil state does not acknowledge the primacy of the Social Reign as it is exercised by Holy Mother Church, then it follows quite logically and quite inexorably that its citizens will live in a state of lawlessness and rootlessness under the yoke of Satan himself. There is no middle ground. It is indeed either Christ or chaos, as the then Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen noted in 1931 in his “A Plea for Intolerance.” That is why it is essential for Catholics to know and to remember the simple fact that all of the problems of modernity have their proximate roots in the violent overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King that began with the Protestant Revolt in 1517 and the rise of modern nation-state. The overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King was further institutionalized and taken to its logical conclusion–the deification of man and his “rights”–with the rise of Freemasonry in England in 1717 and the various revolutions inspired by the assertion of man's ability to remake the world without acknowledging the Incarnation, the authority of the one, true Church Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and the Deposit of Faith he entrusted to her, and by categorically rejecting the absolute necessity of sanctifying grace as the foundation of personal sanctity and hence all social order.

The American founding is the product of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Freemasonry. Some protest by saying that some of the founders believed in God generically and that most believed in some sort of Protestant Christianity. Well, you see, a generic belief in God is not good enough. The pagans of antiquity believed in the “gods.” God happened to bother about becoming Flesh in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb at the Incarnation so as to reveal to all mankind for all eternity the reality of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that it would be through the Son's self-sacrifice to the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross that the power of sin and eternal death would be forever crushed and the blood debt of human sin would be repaid. No, a generic belief in “God” is not good enough, folks. All men in all places at all times are called upon to recognize and to publicly acknowledge the true God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church. And the fact that some of the founders were Protestants and that the culture of the first thirteen states and adjacent territories was primarily Protestant does not redeem the founders or the founding as Protestantism is based on a rejection of the totality of the Deposit of Faith Christ Himself revealed and entrusted to His true Church. This is but a summary of a number of points I made in a piece published on the Seattle Catholic website last year, “God is More Powerful than Liars.”

Pope Leo XIII put it this way in his encyclical letter on the Christian constitution of states, Immortale Dei , in 1885:

“To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.”

  Any nation founded in the belief that it is possible to ignore the Deposit of Faith Our Lord entrusted to His true Church as the basis of both personal and social order is bound to generate to the point where atheism is considered to be the lowest common denominator. It is a short step from atheism for a society to descend to barbarism. It was from barbarism that the first Catholic missionaries converted the tribes of Europe. It was from barbarism that Our Lady of Guadalupe called the peoples of the Americas. A return to barbarism is but the logical and unstoppable progression of demonic forces that take hold of a de-Catholicized world where Satan is enthroned with all of his empty works and pomps.

Again, turning to Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei :

“So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and 1truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and 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 life, from laws, from the education 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 known 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 not carried out in action.”

A nation that does not recognize the primacy of the true Church and her authority to discipline civil rulers who attempt to make or enforce laws or edicts contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law–and/or injurious to the salvation of human souls–is destined for the dustbin of history. Merely recognizing this primacy is no guarantor of personal sanctity or social order, to be sure. However, a recognition of the primacy of Christ the King as He has revealed Himself through His true Church is the necessary precondition for social order. If men are not taught to believe the Deposit of Faith whole and entire without one whit of dissent–and if they do not have access to, belief in, and cooperation with sanctifying grace, the nations in which they live will come to endorse every manner of sin and perversion imaginable.

Thus, the spectacle we are witnessing in the United States of America at present of the “marriage” of homosexual and lesbian “couples” is but another in the logical degeneration of events in a country that is rootless as a result of its defective founding. Why should we be surprised that the Mayor of the City of San Francisco, California, or California Superior Court judges or the Clerk of Sandoval County, New Mexico, or the justices of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Supreme Court have taken it upon themselves to endorse the perverse concept of practicing sodomites and lesbians getting “married” as a matter of “liberty” and human rights? If we can endorse the overthrow of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marital relations by means of contraception, if we can slaughter the unborn both by means of chemical and surgical abortion, if we can declare that marriages between a man and woman are dissoluble, if we can say that pornographers and the producers of obscene and lewd music and films have the “right” to ply their wares, then by what exercise of logic can sodomite and lesbian “marriages” be stopped? Either we obey God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church or we descend quite naturally to the reign of Satan.

President George W. Bush, who has quite characteristically said some contradictory things about this matter (opposing “same-sex marriages” but stating that states should be permitted to endorse “civil unions”), is both a product of the errors of modernity and a propagator of those errors. In comments made in a photo-opportunity on February 18, 2004, President Bush said that he was “troubled” by activist judges who were re-defining marriage. However, he also said that it was up to the people to decide the issue, not judge. First Lady Laura Bush echoed those sentiments on the same day, saying: “I think people ought to have that opportunity to debate it, to think about it, to see what the American people really want to do about the issue.” The President is wrong. His wife is wrong. The “people” en masse have no more of a “say” about defining marriage than judges, activist or otherwise. Marriage is defined by God. Period. End of argument.

President Bush reiterated these shallow remarks on February 24, 2004, when announcing his support for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man as husband and a woman as wife, while leaving the states “free to define legal arrangements other than marriage:”

“On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. Activist courts have left the people with one recourse. If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country.”

The “voice of the people” must be heard? What about the voice of God? Alas, people who are themselves defined by the ethos of Protestantism and the mythology of popular sovereignty wind up undermining whatever inchoate opposition they might have to certain moral evils precisely because of the inherent contradictions upon which both Protestantism and the modern state are founded. A “firm” stand against “same sex marriages” that winds up permitting “civil unions” is absurd. Of course, equally absurd is Senator John Kerry's wanting us to be believe that he couldn't comment on the events in San Francisco because he had not heard about them. Sure, right.

Pope Leo XIII spoke forcefully on the false belief that it is the “voice of the people” that matters. Referring to the political goals of Freemasonry in Humanum Genus , Pope Leo wrote:

“Then come their doctrines of politics, in which the naturalists lay down that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves. According to this, therefore, all things belong to the free people; power is held by the command or permission of the people, so that, when the popular will changes, rulers may lawfully be deposed and the source of all rights and civil duties is either in the multitude or in the governing authority when this is constituted according to the latest doctrines. It is held also that the State should be without God; that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.

“That these doctrines are equally acceptable to the Freemasons, and that they would wish to constitute States according to this example and model, is too well known to require proof. For some time past they have openly endeavored to bring this about with all their strength and resources; and in this they prepare the way for not a few bolder men who are hurrying on even to worse things, in their endeavor to obtain equality and community of all goods by the destruction of every distinction of rank and property.

“What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ. -- So also the studious endeavor of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race.

“The evil, too, is increased by the dangers which threaten both domestic and civil society. As We have elsewhere shown, in marriage, according to the belief of almost every nation, there is something sacred and religious; and the law of God has determined that marriages shall not be dissolved. If they are deprived of their sacred character, and made dissoluble, trouble and confusion in the family will be the result, the wife being deprived of her dignity and the children left without protection as to their interests and well being. -- To have in public matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist, is a rashness unknown to the very pagans ; for in their heart and soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have city without foundation than a city without God. Human society, indeed for which by nature we are formed, has been constituted by God the Author of nature; and from Him, as from their principle and source, flow in all their strength and permanence the countless benefits with which society abounds. As we are each of us admonished by the very voice of nature to worship God in piety and holiness, as the Giver unto us of life and of all that is good therein, so also and for the same reason, nations and States are bound to worship Him; and therefore it is clear that those who would absolve society from all religious duty act not only unjustly but also with ignorance and folly.”

The “people” are not “sovereign.” Christ the King alone is the Sovereign and Holy Mother Church is His chosen instrument to enforce His sovereignty over men and their nations, something that almost all of popes and the bishops of the past forty-five years have ignored, trying to emphasize a most novel and modernist concept of the “civilization of love” rather than the “divisiveness” associated with rank denominationalism. And it is these popes and bishops, therefore, who are really far more to blame for what is going on in San Francisco and Massachusetts and Vermont and New Mexico than empty-headed politicians who don't understand First Principles. It is precisely because the Church herself has abandoned the proclamation of the Social Reign of Christ the King that the errors of modernity have been permitted to spread in an almost unchecked manner, especially in the past forty years or so. To my knowledge, not one bishop has thus far called sodomy by its proper name and stated publicly that it is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Not one bishop has stated publicly that those who persist unrepentantly in any mortal sin, including sodomy, until the moment of their dying breaths risk the fires of Hell for all eternity.

One of the ways that the devil has worked to undermine the authority of the Church is by convincing bishops and priests and theologians that sodomy is not one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance and that those who are inclined to acts against nature are not disqualified from ordination to the priesthood. The now two year old flood of news stories in the secular media about matters well known to Catholics who read reports of the sodomite scandals in The Wanderer and who have followed the work of Roman Catholic Faith, Incorporated, is being used with special delight by the Adversary and his minions to silence the Church at a time when her voice is needed to denounce clearly and unambiguously the spectacles taking place in San Francisco and New Mexico at present.

There is only one antidote to all of this--and it is not a constitutional amendment that illicitly permits state legislatures to permit “civil unions.” We have to think as Catholics, folks, not as secularists who want to pretend that the Incarnation did not occur or that it does not matter. The only antidote to the poisons that have been coursing through the world at such a rapid pace for the past five centuries now is for some pope to actually consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary along with all of the other bishops in the world. The errors of Russia, which are really the composite of the errors of modernity, founded as it is in a rejection of the Incarnation, will then cease to spread both in Church and in the world at large. Christ will reign as King and His Immaculate Mother will reign as our loving Queen. Although we must combat the evils that are in our midst as best we can by proclaiming the truths of the true Faith and by working for the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass, which most perfectly and completely expresses the fullness of the Faith without any dilution or hint of compromise, we must also be aware that the evils we are fighting need first to be fought in the midst of our own personal lives by means of personal sanctity. If the Kingship of Christ does not reign in our own hearts, minds, and souls, then it will have less of a chance to reign triumphantly in society as it did during the Middle Ages.

Entrusting all to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we pray for our own conversion on a daily basis, the conversion of this nation and the world the Social Reign of Christ the King, and to the conversion of all men and women steeped in unrepentant sin and the conversion of those who enable them to remain unrepentant and exultant in that which is harmful to themselves and to their societies.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.