Counterfeit Church, Counterfeit Sacraments, Counterfeit Teaching, Counterfeit Everything, part one

One of the consistent themes on this site in the past fourteen years since I came, most belatedly, to be sure (and after several people had heated arguments with me dating back to 1975), to accept the fact that the men who had been “elected” since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, were heretics and that what appeared to be the Catholic Church was actually her counterfeit ape is that dogmatic evolutionism is the foundation of the entire false enterprise that tries to passes itself off as the Catholic Church. Over two hundred fifty articles on this site in the past fourteen years either centered or touched upon the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s foundational warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth, which is nothing other than an open attack upon the nature of God Himself and His immutability.

Although I realize full well that people can forget what they read rather quickly given the literal bombarding of “news,” “information” and commentary that exists online now, I would be very surprised if anyone who has been reading this site regularly can fail to recall the fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is premised upon the following false principles that have been condemned at the [First] Vatican Council:

For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward

• not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
• but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.

1. Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding, (Chapter  4, On Faith and Reason, Nos. 13-14, Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Faith, Vatican Ecumenical Council, April 18, 1870.)
2. If anyone says that ​it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Canons: Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Faith, Vatican Ecumenical Council, April 18, 1870.)

The entire fabric of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is premised upon the great façade of dogmatic evolutionism, which, no matter how it has been labeled by the conciliar “popes” and their apparatchiks (“living tradition,” “hermeneutic of continuity,” “fidelity to tradition in newness”). The counterfeit church of conciliarism has reached such a state of degermation at present as to justify dogmatic evolutionism in open and frank terms even though it is a philosophically absurdity and has been condemned solemnly in its incipient forms by Holy Mother Church at the [First] Vatican Council and by Pope Pius X in  Lamentabili Sane, July 1, 1907, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, Praestantia Scripturae, November 18, 1907 and The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910, and by Pope Pius XII in  Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, each of which has been quoted in this website hundreds of time.

This all quite relevant to review as a conciliar apologist, Sergio Certofani, has made a laughably weak—neigh well, incredibly shallow and replete with made-to-order straw men—effort to take a swipe at Father Carlo Maria Vigano’s admission that a “parallel church” has emerged out of the “Second” Vatican Council and, it would appear, to take cognizance of the use of the encyclical letters of a true popes by critics of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in a feeble and wobbly defense of dogmatic evolutionism under the new aegis of “fidelity to tradition in newness.” The Centofani effort is significant as it is almost without precedent for any conciliar revolutionary to make reference to such things as Pope Gregory XVI’s Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, which has heretofore simply been ignored almost entirely from the time of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s inception.

Centofani’s article, which appeared on the Vatican News website, does, however, start by pointing out that Catholics (within the conciliar structures, it would appear) who criticize “Pope Francis’s” teaching by contrasting it with that of “St. John Paul II” and “Pope Benedict XVI” but ignoring how their criticism of the “development” of conciliar documents also damns their sainted “conservative pope” and their  “pope of tradition.” This is an important observation as many “conservative” critics of Jorge Mario Bergoglio within the conciliar structures are simply deaf, dumb and blind to the fact that, no matter the stylistic differences that exist among the conciliar “popes,” they are almost as one concerning the “renewal” that was ushered in by the “Second” Vatican Council, which is a point that has been made repeatedly on this site and that was made in No Space Between Ratzinger and Bergoglio: So Close in Apostasy, So Far From Catholic Truth five and one-half years ago now (someone actually bought two copies of that book a few days ago).

Here is the first excerpt from the Sergio Centofani’s simplistic reply to Bergoglio’s “conservative” and semi-traditional critics:

Certain doctrinal criticisms of the current pontificate show a gradual but increasingly clear-cut separation from the Vatican II Council — not from a certain interpretation of some texts, but from the Council texts themselves. Some interpretations that insist on contrasting Pope Francis with his immediate predecessors thus end up openly criticizing even St John Paul II and Benedict XVI, or by passing over in silence some fundamental aspects of their ministry that represent evident developments of the latest Council. (Development of Doctrine is Fidelity to Trdition in Newness.)

As noted just above, Centofani is certainly correct in his description of the inability of many of Bergoglio’s “conservative” critics in the conciliar structures to see that their criticism of “Pope Francis” also damns Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, whose travels of late have held “resignationists” and other conciliar conspiracy theorists in rapt suspense. “Conservatives” in the conciliar structures never want to criticize Wojtyla and semi-traditionalists never want to criticize Ratzinger even though both were Modernists who based their false conceptions upon variously packaged and labeled versions of dogmatic evolutionism that Pope Saint Pius X mocked as follows in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

Hence it is quite impossible [the Modernists assert] to maintain that they [dogmatic statements] absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: 'These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.' On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason'; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.' Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: 'Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.' (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Pope Saint Pius X specifically condemned Ratzinger/Benedict's entire life's work in the The Oath Against Modernism that he issued on September 1, 1910:

Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. . . .

Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.

I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God. (The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910.) 

The Oath Against Modernism is indeed a witness against the conciliar revolutionaries’ belief that it has been "necessary to learn" that past decisions of Holy Mother Church contain elements that are subject to change and/or that our understanding of dogmatic teaching is subject to “modification” on the basis of changes in language and upon historical circumstances that are subject to alteration or modification as seems “suitable.” This is subjectivism, relativism, positivism, rationalism and theological evolutionism all rolled into one seamless garment, if you will, that is called Modernism, which is, after, the synthesis of all heresies.

Sergio Centofani does not reject dogmatic evolutionism as he is a full-blooded, dyed-in-the-wool dogmatic evolutionist no matter the sophistic gymnastics that he might use to disguise this fact by passing off apostasies as “prophetic” declarations of “fidelity to tradition in newness.” One such “prophecy,” Sergio Certofani believes, is false ecumenism:

One example of this was the recent 25th anniversary of the encyclical Ut unum sint, in which Pope St John Paul II stated that ecumenical commitment and dialogue with non-Catholics are a priority of the Church. This anniversary has been ignored by those who today propose a reductive interpretation of tradition, closed to that “dialogue of love,” beyond the doctrinal, which was promoted by the Polish Pope in obedience to our Lord's ardent desire for unity. (Development of Doctrine is Fidelity to Trdition in Newness.)

Sergo Centofani is a clever man. However, he is a propagandizing pamphleteer who thinks that sweet-sounding phrases such as “a dialogue of love” is “beyond the doctrinal” can vitiate the revealed teaching that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has deposited in Holy Mother and has been safeguarded inviolably under the infallible protection of God the Holy Ghost from Pentecost Sunday thereafter. To assert that feelings of empty sentimentality make dogmatic truth irrelevant, if not abjectly harmful, is so odiously evil as to betray Centofani as simply another garden variety pantheist who projects onto God whatever attributes that seem to tickle the itching ears of men as suits them according to their own circumstances and capacity to accept.

The Catholic Church has taught the following about false ecumenism, and she has done so out of her true charity for those sheep who must be within her fold to be saved:

It is for this reason that so many who do not share 'the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church' must make use of the occasion of the Council, by the means of the Catholic Church, which received in Her bosom their ancestors, proposes [further] demonstration of profound unity and of firm vital force; hear the requirements [demands] of her heart, they must engage themselves to leave this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She does not hesitate to raise to the Lord of mercy most fervent prayers to tear down of the walls of division, to dissipate the haze of errors, and lead them back within holy Mother Church, where their Ancestors found salutary pastures of life; where, in an exclusive way, is conserved and transmitted whole the doctrine of Jesus Christ and wherein is dispensed the mysteries of heavenly grace.

It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.) 

Pope Leo XIII, addressing himself to the Orthodox in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29, 1894, exhorted the schismatics to return to the One Sheepfold of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, outside  of which there can salvation and without which there can be no true social order:

Weigh carefully in your minds and before God the nature of Our request.  It is not for any human motive, but impelled by Divine Charity and a desire for the salvation of all, that We advise the reconciliation and union with the Church of Rome; and We mean a perfect and complete union, such as could not subsist in any way if nothing else was brought about but a certain kind of agreement in the Tenets of Belief and an intercourse of Fraternal love.  The True Union between Christians is that which Jesus Christ, the Author of the Church, instituted and desired, and which consists in a Unity of Faith and Unity of Government. (Pope Leo XIII, referring to the Orthodox in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1894.)

It was a mere sixty years after Pope Pius IX issued Iam Vos Omnes as an exhortation for Protestants to convert to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, that Pope Pius XII issued a similar exhortation while reminding the bishops of the world that the only way that “the union for Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those wo are separated from it and not by Catholics participating in the assemblies of non-Catholics”:

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. . . .  Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is 'the root and womb whence the Church of God springs,' not with the intention and the hope that 'the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth' will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail. Would that God our Savior, "Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," would hear us when We humbly beg that He would deign to recall all who stray to the unity of the Church! In this most important undertaking We ask and wish that others should ask the prayers of Blessed Mary the Virgin, Mother of divine grace, victorious over all heresies and Help of Christians, that She may implore for Us the speedy coming of the much hoped-for day, when all men shall hear the voice of Her divine Son, and shall be 'careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.'" (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

Just consider two of the statements quoted above, one from Pope Pius IX's Iam Vos Omnes and the other from Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos:

. . . .the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes.)

To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos.)

None of this has mattered to any of the six conciliar “popes,” and Jorge Mario Bergoglio has taken things so far as to base his “ecclesiology” upon an unconditional acceptance of all "believers" as part of the "church," thus placing him in perfect communion with Martin Luther himself, who believed that the "church" was an amorphous mass of "believers," not a visible, hierarchical society. 

Unity exists in the Catholic Church. It is one of her Four Marks. No other religion except Catholicism pleases the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity.

Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. "For in one spirit" says the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free." As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered - so the Lord commands - as a heathen and a publican. It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.) 

The Catholic Church gives us clarity and nothing else. She does not give us statements that make it appear as though "visible unity" among all "believers" has not yet been achieved as only those who believe in Our Lord as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church are His true believers. Those steeped in errors about the nature of Our Lord and the Divine Constitution of His Holy Church cannot give a "witness" in behalf of anything other that confusion, something that applies as much to the conciliar revolutionaries as to all non-Catholic Christians and others.

Yet it is that Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio have sought in their varying ways and styles to effect an “intercourse of Fraternal love” with heretics and schismatics. The passage of time does not render truth “obsolete,” but this what Ratzinger/Benedict himself has argued throughout the course of his legendary career as a priestly purveyor of apostasy:

1971: "In theses 10-12, the difficult problem of the relationship between language and thought is debated, which in post-conciliar discussions was the immediate departure point of the dispute. 

The identity of the Christian substance as such, the Christian 'thing' was not directly ... censured, but it was pointed out that no formula, no matter how valid and indispensable it may have been in its time, can fully express the thought mentioned in it and declare it unequivocally forever, since language is constantly in movement and the content of its meaning changes." (Fr. Ratzinger: Dogmatic formulas must always change.)

1990: "The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time." (Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, cited at Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete)

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.  

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.

Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.

It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.

The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.

The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

What was that Pope Pius XII wrote in Humani Generis about how the "new theologians" deny that the true meaning of doctrines may be known and understood with metaphysical certitude?

Let me remind you:

34. It is not surprising that these new opinions endanger the two philosophical sciences which by their very nature are closely connected with the doctrine of faith, that is, theodicy and ethics; they hold that the function of these two sciences is not to prove with certitude anything about God or any other transcendental being, but rather to show that the truths which faith teaches about a personal God and about His precepts, are perfectly consistent with the necessities of life and are therefore to be accepted by all, in order to avoid despair and to attain eternal salvation. All these opinions and affirmations are openly contrary to the documents of Our Predecessors Leo XIII and Pius X, and cannot be reconciled with the decrees of the Vatican Council. It would indeed be unnecessary to deplore these aberrations from the truth, if all, even in the field of philosophy, directed their attention with the proper reverence to the Teaching Authority of the Church, which by divine institution has the mission not only to guard and interpret the deposit of divinely revealed truth, but also to keep watch over the philosophical sciences themselves, in order that Catholic dogmas may suffer no harm because of erroneous opinions. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.

For the likes of men such as the conciliar revolutionaries to be correct, the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity not only hid the true meaning of doctrines for over nineteen hundred years, He permitted true popes and the Fathers of Holy Mother Church's twenty true general councils to condemn propositions that have, we are supposed to believe, only recently been "discovered" as having been true. Blasphemous and heretical.

Despite Sergio Cnrtofani’s effort to use straw man arguments such as “Saint John Paul II’s “rehabilitation” of Galileo Galilee that was the subject of Robert Sungenis’s and Robert Bennett’s well-documented Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right and the old conciliar chestnut about the Polish Modernist’s apologies for the Crusades that began with Blessed Pope Urban II’s call to recover the Holy Land from the Mohammedan infidels (see So Much For Charles Martel, So Much for the Crusades, So Much for Pius V and Jan Sobieski, So Much for Catholic Truth).

Centofani’s efforts to distract readers with the Galileo case was accompanied by another distraction, namely, the effort to paint Pope Pius XII as an unqualified supporter of the ideology of biological evolutionism that has been disproved since then because of the completion of the DNA model in 1953, three years after His Holiness issued Humani Generis, which had, as noted above, condemned dogmatic evolutionism as proposed by the “nouvelle theologie.” As will be seen below, Centofani lumped Pope Pius XII’s openness to studies about evolutionism together with the unqualified support given it by two theological, ecclesiological, liturgical and pastoral revolutionaries, namely, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II and Jorge Mario Bergoglio:

A similar growth in the Church's awareness occurred with the theory of evolution which seemed to contradict the principle of creation. A first opening was that of Pius XII with the Encyclical Humani generis of 1950 (its 70th anniversary will be on 12 August). St. John Paul II affirmed that “creation places itself in the light of evolution as an event that extends over time - as a creatio continua - in which God becomes visible to the eyes of the believer as the Creator of Heaven and earth”. Pope Francis underlines that “when we read the story of Creation in Genesis, we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with an all-powerful magic wand. But that was not so. He created beings and he let them develop according to the internal laws with which He endowed each one, that they might develop, and reach their fullness (…) The Big Bang theory, which is proposed today as the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of a divine creator but depends on it. Evolution in nature does not conflict with the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings who evolve. (Development of Doctrine is Fidelity to Trdition in Newness.)

This blasphemous paragraph denies God’s Omnipotence, something that is quite logical for a man who does not believe in God’s Immutability. Those do not believe God’s Immutability and who mock His Omnipotence and Omniscience do not believe in the true God of Divine Revelation, They are nothing but pagans.

Pope Pius XII, while keeping an open mind on scientific discussions on evolution, which has been proved since that time to be a thoroughly discredited ideology, insisted in Humani Generis, August 15, 1950, that all human beings are descended from Adam:

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 15, 1950.) 

Pope Pius XII's openness to studies in evolution seems to have changed in the 1953 after the completion of the model of DNA, which makes it impossible for there to be "evolution" from one species to another. It was the discovery of DNA that caused one fervent group of evolutionists in 1980 to admit that Darwin's theory of natural selection was no longer supportable. That did not stop them from believing in evolutionism, which, they contended, could be "proved" by other disproved explanations offered by their fellow junk scientists.

Moreover, the late Mr. Gerard Keane's Creation Rediscovered reports that Pope Pius XII expressed "serious reservations about the scientific credibility" of evolutionism in an address delivered to the First International Congress of Medical Genetics, September 7, 1953:

In recent works on genetics one reads that the connection between living things cannot be explained better than by supposing a common genealogical tree. It is, however, necessary to remark that we have here is an image, a hypothesis, not a demonstrated fact. . . . If most research workers speak of genealogical descent as a fact, they are premature in doing so. Other hypotheses are possible [in addition to that of evolution] . . . [Besides] scientists of repute have pointed out that in their opinion one cannot as yet say what is real and exact meaning of terms such as "evolution," "descent" and "transmission"; that we know of no natural process by which one being can beget another of a different kind; that the process by which one species begets another is altogether unintelligible, no matter how many intermediate stages be supposed; that no experimental method for producing one species from another has been found; and finally that we have no idea at what stage in the evolutionary process the hominoid suddenly crossed the threshold of humanity  . . . [In conclusion] one is forced to say that the study of human origins is only at its beginnings: there is nothing definitive about present-day theory. (Quoted in Gerard Keane, Creation Rediscovered, p. 201.)

It is perhaps the case that Pope Pius XII's 1953 allocution was an effort to further qualify the openness to the study of evolution that had been expressed in Humani Generis, which was unjustified, some believe, even on the basis of what was known by true secular science in 1950. Nevertheless, everything in true science since 1950 has debunked evolutionism, making endorsements of it by the likes of the conciliar “popes” all the more laughable and inexcusable. Sergio Centofani’s efforts to exploit Pope Pius XII for purposes of making him a witness in behalf of theological evolutionism is thus a reprehensible exercise of rank intellectual dishonesty.

Ah, Centofani’s coup de grace involved an insipid dismissal of Holy Mother Church’s immutable teaching concerning the necessity of the civil state’s recognizing her as its official religion and the duty of all who exercise state power to pursue the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity:

In the New Testament, but not only there, can be found very profound calls to freedom that have changed history; but they are discovered slowly. Pope Boniface VIII, with the Bull Unam sanctam of 1302, reaffirmed the superiority of spiritual authority over temporal authority. It was a different era. 

Almost 700 years later, John Paul II, speaking in Strasbourg before the European Parliament, observed that medieval Christianity still did not distinguish “between the proper spheres of faith and that of civil life”. The consequence of this vision was the “integralist temptation to exclude those who did not profess the true faith from the temporal community”. Even as late as 1791, in a letter to the French bishops, Pius VI criticized the Constitution passed by the National Assembly that “established as a principle of natural law that a person living in Society must be completely free. That is, he or she must not be disturbed by anyone, and can freely think as he or she likes, and write and even publish in print anything in matters of Religion." 

And in 1832, Gregory XVI's Encyclical Mirari vos spoke of freedom of conscience as a “most poisonous error” and “delirium”; while Pius IX in the 1864 Syllabus condemns among “the principal errors of our age” the idea that it is no longer appropriate “that the Catholic religion should be considered the only religion of the State, excluding all other religions, never minding what one wants” and the fact that “in some Catholic countries it has been established by law that those who go there are entitled to have public worship proper to each one." The Second Vatican Council, with its Declarations Dignitatis humanae, On Religious Freedom; and Nostra aetate, on the Relation of the Church with non-Christian Religions, makes a leap forward that recalls the Council of Jerusalem of the first Christian community that opened the Church to all humanity. Faced with these challenges, Saint John Paul II affirmed that “the pastor must show that he is ready for authentic boldness”.  (Development of Doctrine is Fidelity to Trdition in Newness.)

Centofani is one of the first Jacobin/Bolshevik conciliar revolutionaries to even admit that there was a Pope Gregory XVI, who had, of course, correctly condemned unrestricted “freedom of conscience” as follows in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:

"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.

Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

Although Holy Mother Church accommodates herself to the concrete realities in which her children live, she makes no concession to errors that have resulted in the triumph of religious indifferentism and overt hostility to the true Faith despite conciliarists’ efforts to claim that Dignitatis Humanae does not endorse such indifferentism and leaves in place the traditional Catholic teaching about the duty of individuals to adhere to the true religion, a duty, it should be noted, that Jorge Mario Bergoglio specifically rejects every time he tells a Jew or a Protestant that he does not seek to convert anyone to what is thought to be the Catholic Church but is in fact her counterfeit ape. The Pope Leo XIII also noted that Holy Mother Church will use the “liberties” that exist within the modern civil state to continue her work of sanctifying souls. She recognizes the concrete realities in which her children live while continuing her opposition to falsehoods that she knows will undermine the life of the Faith over the course of time.

Pope Leo XIII explained the consequences that flow from the errors of the modern civil state, founded as it is on the twin Judeo-Masonic errors of “separation of Church and State” and “religious liberty”:

This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

To embrace “religious liberty” is to further enable an already emboldened world and its blood-stained cast of criminal leaders and opinion-makers to further stain public life with crime in the name of “improving the lot of the poor and the oppressed” while impoverishing and oppressing everyone just about equally.

To embrace “religious liberty” is to stigmatize and/or criminalize all public references to the Divine Redeemer Himself, and the fact that Jorge Mario Bergoglio saw fit to feed into this Judeo-Masonic conspiracy against the Holy Name of Jesus makes him the greatest criminal alive on the face of this earth today. The Catholic Church continues to oppose errors while attempting to make use of modern liberties to advance her work of sanctifying her children so that they can save their souls. The counterfeit church of conciliarism embraces the errors of Modernity as good in and of themselves.

Popes Pius VI, VII, Gregory XVI, Pius VIII, IX, Leo XIII, and Saint Pius X were prophetic in their courageous exhortations against modern errors. They enunciated immutable truths that Holy Mother Church has always proclaimed no matter if men and their nations do not accept them or, quite indeed, make warfare upon them. Truth exists. It is, and truth does not “evolve” into its antithesis over time as to believe this Hegelian lie is to betray oneself as enemy of truth and hence an enemy of Truth Himself, Christ the King. The appendix below contains the constant teaching of our true popes against the very errors that are the foundation of their own “official reconciliation” with the anti-Incarnational principles of Modernity that have reduced to injurious babblers of naturalistic ideology, up to and including Marxism-Leninism itself (see No One Can At the Same be Good Catholic and a True Socialist).

Even pagan states of antiquity a common cult—a pietas—that held their societies together until they collapsed under the weight of their false beliefs and the unchecked immorality of their people. The first nation that recognized no common religion was the United States of America, whose example of religious indifferentism was matched and exceeded by the antitheism of the French Revolutionaries, who smashed Catholic churches, desecrated altars, decapitated statues, destroyed the relics of Saints Louis IX, Joan of Arc and Vincent de Paul.

Then again, the conciliar revolutionaries and the counterfeit church of conciliarism whose cause they champion are the worst destroyers on the face of this earth and have been so for the past sixty years. They are more dangerous than the admittedly dangerous Communist insurrectionists named Black Lives Matter, whose diabolically-inspired leader is urging his deranged followers to tear down statues of Our Lord and Our Lady because this bigoted, power drunk ignoramus has decreed them to be symbolic of “white European oppression” in all his self-anointed and self-delusional leader, who, it would appear, believes in own infallible omniscience. Nonetheless, however, the conciliar revolutionaries are far more dangerous this pitiable racist because they have been busy at the work of destroying the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem.

Outdoing the destruction of Catholic churches, statues and holy objects wrought by the Lutherans, the Anglicans and the Calvinists at the height of the very bloody Protestant Revolution—and rivaling the hatred for the French Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks in their hatred of the true Catholic Faith and her authentic history, the conciliar revolutionaries have taken a veritable wrecking ball to the Holy Faith by obliterating and “reinventing” doctrines, imposing liturgical rites that are abominable in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, reaffirmed hardened sinners in their lives of perdition, comforted non-Catholics and even atheists in the assurance that, to paraphrase Bergoglio, “we will meet you there.”

Obviously, this is to say nothing of their work of the actual physical destruction and/or selling of church buildings, the wreckovation of high altars, sanctuaries, statues images that is as yet ongoing. The work of destruction has been such that Jacobin/Bolsheviks such as Blase Cupich, the arch-destroyer of the lawless municipal corporation that goes by the name of Chicago, Illinois, hve exploited the current plandemic (yes, the planned “second wave” is here, thanks to an ever-widening definition of what constitutes being infected with the Chinese/Wuhan/China/Covid-19/Coronavirus) to force the closure of churches altogether. The conciliar revolutionaries are the most diabolically-inspired and destructive forces of actual hate in the world today.

Come on, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/ “Saint Paul VI” used all manner of devices in the years after the “Second” Vatican Council to shut up cardinals and bishops who tried to cling to Catholic teaching by reading into that true robber council’s decrees orthodox interpretations of which they did not admit. Montini/Paul VI sought to purge these older prelates by imposing a mandatory age for retirement so that he could populate Catholic chancery offices in conciliar captivity with his own Jacobin/Bolshevik revolutionaries, who themselves would hold truly Catholic pastors and other priests to strict retirement at age seventy-five. Montini was so brutal that he stopped at nothing to advance his infamous Ostpolitik, including lying to Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, the Archbishop of Budapest and the Primate Hungary to leave the American Embassy in Budapest, where he had taken refuge in 1956 after the Hungarian Revolution was foiled by an invasion of the Red Army from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, by telling him that he could return to Hungary and resume his episcopacy there. Montini/Paul VI had made a deal with the Communists that left Cardinal Mindszenty out in the cold, thus beginning the populating of diocesan sees behind the Iron Curtain with Marxist sympathizers.

Many of Montini/Paul VI’s appointees in the United States of America were complete Stalinists as they sought to purge pastors and priests they deemed to be “too conservative” or “rigid” in the late-1960s and thereafter. This was even true in many communities of religious men and women. All that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been doing in the last seventy-seven months is continuing the Stalinist purges that continued pretty much unabated even during Wojtyla/John Paul II years, noting a few instances, one in which I was involved personally, where “Rome” intervened to stop a pastoral assassination after the “hit” had been ordered by a diocesan chancery office. Bergoglio is simply making such “hits” a regular feature of his antipapacy.

Although largely anecdotal and not as of yet recounted in a systematic manner in any one place, many of us know numerous instances in which priests and religious have been sent to psychiatric reprogramming centers because they resisted the first wave of the conciliar "reforms" in the middle to latter part of the 1960s. This persecution of those deemed to be "conservative" or "rigid" has continued in many dioceses and religious communities to this very day.  

We were told some eleven years ago now of some very compelling stories by a consecrated religious woman who had worked as a nurse prior to entering the religious life, one of which involved a woman religious in the 1960s who was told by her superiors to report to a psychiatrist for “evaluation” because she would not give up her community's traditional habit.

The psychiatrist knew the consecrated religious because she had worked in the same hospital for a while as a nurse. He told to get out of the hospital immediately, that there was nothing wrong with her, but that she should not return to her community as there was an effort to imprison those priests and religious who resisted the conciliar changes. The psychiatrist led the religious woman, who told the story to our narrator, herself in traditional religious life, to a door where she could exit without being noticed, although she had seen many of her “disappeared” sisters sitting in wheelchairs in a doped-up state on her way into the psychiatrist's office.

This particular story has credibility as I know of men who have been candidates for the conciliar presbyterate who have been screened out in many dioceses and religious communities because they have been deemed to suffer from "rigidity."

As I have recounted on other occasions, the secular Talmudic psychologist who screened candidates for the Diocese of Rockville Centre for many years, the late Dr. Leonard Krinsky, came to some interesting conclusions following about me in May of 1979 following a psychological evaluation of me. Dr. Krinsky, now deceased, wrote that my concept of the priesthood as the sacerdos was preconciliar and self-centered, noting that that my desire to live a priestly life of prayer, penance, self-denial and mortification were "possible signs of masochism." Dr. Krinsky’s report concluded by saying that while I was “free of any psychopathology, intelligent, creative, and had the capacity for rich, interpersonal relationships,” I “lacked the sufficient flexibility needed to adapt to the changing circumstances of a postconciliar vocation.”' In other words, I was "too rigid" in my beliefs, something that many other vocations directors, both for dioceses and religious communities told me in the 1970s and 1980s.

I know of scores of men who were persecuted for their "conservatism" after their installation as presbyters in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

One man, the late Reverend Anthony Dandry, who was a seminarian with me at Holy Apostles Seminary during the 1983-1984 academic year, told me that he had been ordered to seek a psychological evaluation because he wore a biretta and preached about the reality of hell “too much.” Tony Dandry may not have been a true priest. However, he was very devoted to Our Lady, believing that he had been “ordained” as a priest to save souls, not to make his parishioners feel comfortable. After seeking the advice of a true priest, the late Father Benedict Groeschel, within the conciliar structures, though, he arranged to get an evaluation from a psychologist not associated with his diocese, obtaining a clean bill of mental health thereafter.

Yes, good readers, stories related in the past on this site about the abuse of psychiatry and psychology in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, are very relevant to what has been happening and what continues to happen to men and to women in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who are deemed to be “rigid” and thus “mentally deficient” by the “merciful” and “non-judgmental” agents of Antichrist, to say nothing of those who are helping to expose the moral rot within a false religious sect that is doctrinally, liturgically and pastorally corrupt.

Sergio Centofani closed his feebly shallow attempt to refute Father Carlo Maria Vigano’s statement that admitted the simple fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church, which is a courageous first step in the process that might, please God and by Our Lady’s prayers, result in his open, public admission about the invalidity of the conciliar “popes,” with the same, tired, cliché-ridden blasphemy that what “Pope Francis” is doing now is to bring “new wine” out of “old wineskins” in imitation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself breaking the precepts of the Mosaic Law by plucking grain and performing miracle on the Sabbath:

Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the Law, “but to fullfill it” (Mt 5:17). He taught us not to break “even the smallest of these precepts” (Mt 5:19). Yet He was accused of violating the Mosaic Law, such as the Sabbath rest or the prohibition of associating with public sinners. And the apostles took the great leap: they abolished the sacred obligation of circumcision, dating back even to Abraham and in force for 2000 years, and opened the door to the pagans - something unthinkable at that time. “Behold,” says the Lord, “I make all things new” (Rev 21, 5). It is the “new wine” of evangelical love that always suffers the risk of being put in the “old wineskins” of our religious insecurity, which so often silences the living God who never stops speaking to us. It is the wisdom of the “disciple of the kingdom of heaven” who seeks the fullness of the Law and justice that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, bringing out “new and old things from his treasure” (Mt 13:52). Not new things only, nor only old things.  (Development of Doctrine is Fidelity to Trdition in Newness.)

 Blasphemy.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is God. He was the Author of the Mosaic Law and knew that He was going to supersede it with the New and Everlasting Covenant that He Himself would institute at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and then ratify with the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the Holy Cross on Good Friday. Our Lord, Who was Omniscient at all times of His life here on earth, was teaching from the strictures of Judaism to the true liberation that by means of the ineffable graces that He was to win for the many by His Redemptive Act on the wood of Holy Cross.

To assert that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that there is a conflict between the Sacred Deposit of Faith that He entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its infallible explication and what the conciliar revolutionaries contend is a “higher law love” is to blaspheme Our Lord and to make a mockery of Holy Mother Church’s doctrinal purity. Holy Mother Church can never teach error, and she can never contradict herself. Believing Catholics still pray the Act of Faith every day, and believing Catholics believe every word contained in the Act of Faith. The certainty with which we must hold the truths of the Holy Faith have been summarized very succinctly in the Act of Faith:

O my God, I firmly believe that Thou are one God in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I believe that Thy divine son became Man, died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.

To imply that men must “liberated” from doctrinal teaching by a “merciful” “pope” is to imply that the Catholic Church is not infallible in all that pertains to the good of souls and that, in effect, “everything is up for grabs.

The conciliar revolution has been so successful in eradicating the sensus Catholicus from the minds and hearts of most baptized Catholics in the world that even those who believe themselves to be “bishops” are incapable of denouncing the destruction of property and can actually go so far as to justify the destruction of various statues, including those of Catholic saints, martyrs and missionaries, by “understanding” what motivates those who want to erase secular history just as surely as they have erased the true Faith from the minds and hearts of most Catholics alive today.

Consider the following statement by the conciliar “bishops” of the prison camp known as the People’s Republic of California that is premised upon an explicit acceptance of the new iconoclasts’ false claim that it is necessary to remove statues of historical value on the basis of their own ignorant and ideologically-based presuppositions and prejudices:

“The movement to confront racism within our society during these past weeks has been, at times, challenging but it has provided bold new hope for every American that our nation can begin to transform key elements of our racist past and present.  We vigorously and wholeheartedly support a broad national coalition, especially in its peaceful dedication to eliminating racism against members of the African-American and Native American communities.

“During the past week the specific question of removing statues of political, military and cultural leaders of the past has gained momentum.  If this process is to be truly effective as a remedy for racism, it must discern carefully the entire contribution that the historical figure in question made to American life, especially in advancing the rights of marginalized peoples.

“In calling for the removal of images of Saint Junipero Serra from public display in California, and in tearing down his statue in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, protesters have failed that test.  As Archbishop [Salvatore] Cordileone pointed out in his recent statement:

St. Serra made heroic sacrifices to protect the indigenous people of California from their Spanish conquerors, especially the soldiers.  Even with his infirmed leg which caused him such pain, he walked all the way to Mexico City to obtain special faculties of governance from the Viceroy of Spain in order to discipline the military who were abusing the Indians.  And then he walked back to California.

And lest there be any doubt, we have a physical reminder to this day: everywhere there is a presidio (soldiers' barracks) associated with a mission in the chain of 21 missions that he founded, the presidio is miles away from the mission itself and the school.  St. Junipero Serra also offered them the best thing he had: the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, which he and his fellow Franciscan friars did through education, health care, and training in the agrarian arts.

“The historical truth is that Serra repeatedly pressed the Spanish authorities for better treatment of the Native American communities.  Serra was not simply a man of his times. In working with Native Americans, he was a man ahead of his times who made great sacrifices to defend and serve the indigenous population and work against an oppression that extends far beyond the mission era. And if that is not enough to legitimate a public statue in the state that he did so much to create, then virtually every historical figure from our nation's past will have to be removed for their failings measured in the light of today's standards.” (California "Catholic Conference" Issues Statement on the Removal of Fray Junipero Serra's Statues.)

This is damning Father Junipero Serra with a statement that, while praising his work, sought to excuse faults he did not have and sins that he did not commit by saying that his “failings” should not be measured in light of today’s standards.” This is an incredible attack on the truth of Father Serra’s life and apostolic work in behalf of the Holy Faith in once proudly Catholic California, something that I wrote about five years ago in Father Junipero Serra: Under Attack From the World and Misreprsented by Bergoglio when there was an effort being made by the State Legislature of the State of California at that time to remove Father Serra’s statue from the National Statuary in the United States Capitol building in Washington, District of Columbia:

Father Junipero Serra, O.F.M., fought for justice for the Indians of California not by means of riots and protests. He went to the authorities. He waited for nearly a year to receive the answer to his prayers and sacrifices. He would have accepted any decision made by the Junta. It was solely the spiritual and temporal good of those he served that mattered to him in order to continue the work of the conversion of souls for which he had spent himself to the point of his own death nine months after his seventieth birthday on November 24, 1783.

Indeed, showing himself to have had no part as “prophesying” the “dialogue” and “encounter” of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the counterfeit church of conciliarism, Fray Junipero Serra. O.F.M., specifically told his brother friars before he died that he would be praying for all of his converts and for those as yet unconverted, hardly the stuff of conciliarism:

“I beseech you, Padre,” [Father] Palou began, “when you draw near the presence of the Holy Trinity, offer adoration on my behalf. And after that, never forget me.”

Serra nodded his head. Palou continued. “Also remember these missions that you are leaving orphaned and the people here with you now.”

“I promise you that if God grants me the eternal reward, which I don’t deserve, I will pray for each and every one of you and also for all of those who are still unconverted.” (Mark Brunelle, Fray Junipero Serra. Carmel-by-the Sea, California, Dormonte Publications, 1987, p. 75.)

Not a hint of the blasphemy that Bergoglio uttered two days ago now. Conversion is of the Catholic Faith. “Dialogue” and “encounter” are the stuff of apostasy.

As noted at the beginning of this commentary, Father Serra died on August 28, 1784, the Feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo. The bells of Mission San Carlos de Borromeo, where he is entombed in the stone church that he so longed to build that became known as the Basilica of Saint Charles Borromeo in what is known now as Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, on the Monterery Peninsula. It was none other than his former adversary, the very much interiorly-converted Governor Pedro Fages, who said a few words about the great missionary, Fray Junipero Serra, O.F.M., before the public could pay their last respects to his mortal remains:

Father Francisco Palou made all of the arrangements for the funeral. He dressed his teacher and friend in a fresh robe of the Franciscan Order. Father Serra was placed on a bier and laid before the altar in the chapel. Soldiers blocked the entrance while the preparations were being made, their lances to block the way. Governor Pedro Fage stood in front of the door with Lieutenant Morago on one side and Lieutenant Jose Francisco Ortega on the other. The small mission compound was filled with thousands of people. From the governor’s vantage point he could see people walking toward the chapel in a never-ending flow from the hills surrounding the mission: soldiers of every rank, sailors, ships’ captains, colonists, Christian and non-Christian Indians and their chiefs. As they entered the mission compound, each was given a single flower to be given as a parting gift to their Father and friend.

Inside the church, Fathers Palou and Noriega finished their preparations. Father Serra rested in a simple redwood casket. He was dressed in a gray robe with a new white cord tied around his waist. A metal crucifix rested in his folded hands. His hair was snow white and his face was still slightly brown from all the weathering it had taken.

The Indian children, who made up the choir, were dressed powder-blue, pajama-like costumes. They were all in their places, waiting for Father Noriega to lead them in song. Father Palou let himself out through the side entrance informed the governor that all was ready.

Pedro Fages stepped forward with raised hands and the crowd fell silent immediately, although most of them were still in tears. The mission bells stopped their dirge.

The governor spoke, “We have all assembled here today to pay our last respects to a man who has influenced our lives,” he began. “But how many of us realize that this gentle servant of God has influenced the history of this great and abundant land forever? Without his love, dedication, and undying faith in God, this land would still be nothing but an untamed wilderness.” Fages paused to clear his throat and to wipe the tears from his eyes. “A long time ago, before I realized the things that I am telling you today, I called this man ‘a lover of flowers’ and ‘a lover of children.’ I said that in contempt, in the heat of anger. But now I repeat the statement because I am moved by his love. Long after all of us have been forgotten and our tombstones have turned into dust, millions of people will come from the ends of the earth to stand by his grave and pay homage to Father Junipero Serra.”

The bells began to peal again. The doors to the chapel were swung open and the people entered in a single file. The choir began to sing the Gregorian chants and their voices out of the small room like the boom of a cannon. One by one they filed past the body of Father Junipero Serra. Each made the sign of the cross as they passed and each dropped a single Rose of Castile on the bier and left through the side door. In a very short time, the body of the little priest seemed to be floating on an ocean of pink roses. They were piled high and they spilled over the communion rail and out onto the main floor. (Mark Brunelle, Fray Junipero Serra. Carmel-by-the Sea, California, Dormonte Publications, 1987, pp. 77-78.)

The state legislature of California may very well succeed in removing the statue of Father Junipero Serra, O.F.M., from the National Statuary Hall that features the Cross he carried with him everywhere, the Cross of the Divine Redeemer that he planted in the soil of California and that took such deep roots there that the devil himself has had to attack this once Catholic land with all of the fury of sin and blood and the abuse of civil authority by petty politicians and unelected bureaucrats and judges who make Pontius Pilate look like a statesman. And if I may borrow a phrase of  a native Californian, who was born in Yorba Linda, California, on January 13, 1913, who was probably unfamiliar with the work of Father Serra, “make no mistake about” it: It is hatred of the Cross of the Divine Redeemer that was held aloft by Father Junipero Serra, O.F.M., in California, over three hundred years ago now that is motivating the current effort against him in the political realm and that causes the Argentine Apostate to try to recast a Catholic missionary into something that he was not. For unlike Bergoglio and Karol Wojtyla before him, Father Junipero Serra never hid the Cross of Christ the King from public view for any kind of “pastoral” or “ecumenical” reason. (Father Junipero Serra: Under Attack From the World and Misrepresented by Bergoglio.)

The work of the conciliar revolutionaries is one of destruction. They have devasted the vineyard of Our Blessed Lord and Jesus Christ and thus helped to contribute mightily to the worsening of the state of the world-at-large. These wretched men, some of whom are perhaps demons dressed up to look like men, have sowed chaos of the sort that makes the work of the George Soros-funded nihilists in the cities of the United States of America seem like so much child’s play as there is nothing so devastating to the state of men and their nations than to not only to plant the seeds of doubt in the souls of the Catholic faithful but to seek to extirpate the Faith entirely from the souls of men, who must perforce, barring a deep and abiding devotion to Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary, fall into line with the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil in short order.

Tomorrow, June 27, 2020, is the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Although not on the universal calendar of the Catholic Church, this feast is one that should be commemorated in some manner or another by us all as we need Our Lady’s help on a perpetual basis, especially through her Most Holy Rosary. It should be clear to one and all that things are coming to a head very rapidly insofar as the farce that is the counterfeit church of conciliarism and in the world, where the forces of hell have been let loose to wreak havoc while politicians of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” and while most of those of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” just wring their hands and hope that they say nothing “controversial” that could be construed as “racist.”

Here are the prayers for the Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help that we should pray tomorrow (we pray these prayers every Tuesday evening):

Prayer in Spiritual Wants

O Mother of Perpetual Help * With the greatest confidence, I come before thy sacred Picture, * in order to invoke thine aid. * Thou hast seen the wounds which Jesus has been pleased to receive for my sake; * thou hast seen the Blood of Thy Son flowing for my salvation; * thou knowest how thy Son desires to apply to me the fruits of His Redemption. * Behold, I cast myself at thy feet, * and pray thee to obtain for my soul the grace I stand so much in need of. * O Mary, most loving of all mothers, * obtain for me from the heart of Jesus, the source of every good, * this grace * (here mention them). O Mother of Perpetual Help, * thou desirest my salvation far more than I myself; * thy Son has given thee to me for my Mother; * thou hast thyself chosen to be called Mother of Perpetual Help. * Show then that thou lovest me, * show that thou art really my Mother, * show that thou art justly called Mother of Perpetual Help. * I trust in thy goodness; * I trust in thy motherly love, * Mother of Perpetual Help * for the love thou bearest to Jesus, thy Son and our redeemer, * for the love of thy great servant Alphonsus, * for the love of my soul, * obtain for me the grace I ask from thee. * Amen.

Pray Three Hail Marys.

Prayer in Temporal Wants

O Mother of Perpetual Help, * numerous clients continually surround thy holy Picture, * all imploring thy mercy. * All bless thee as the assured help of the miserable; * all feel the benefit of thy motherly protection. * With confidence, then, do I present myself before thee in my misery. * See, dear Mother, the many evils to which I am exposed; * see how numerous are my wants. * Trials and sorrows often depress me; * reverses of fortune and privations, often grievous, bring misery into my life; * everywhere I meet the cross. * Have pity, compassionate Mother, on me and on my family; * and especially in this my necessity * (here mention it), from which I now suffer, * Help me, O my Mother, in my distress; * deliver me from my ills; * or if it be the will of God that I should endure them, * make me suffer with love and patience. * This grace I expect of thee with confidence, * because thou art my Perpetual help. * Amen.

Pray Three Hail Marys.

For Gra

O Mother of Perpetual help, * thou art the dispenser of all the goods * which God grants to us miserable sinners, * and for this reason, has He made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, * that thou mayest help us in our misery. * Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee; * come then, to my help, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to thee, * In thy hands, I place my eternal salvation * and to thee do I entrust my soul. * Count me among thy most devoted servants; * take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me; * for if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing; * not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; * nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together; nor even from Jesus, my Judge Himself, * because by one prayer from thee, He will be appeased. * But one thing I fear; * that, in the hour of temptation, I may neglect to call on thee, and thus perish miserable. * Obtain for me, then, the pardon of my sins, * love for Jesus, * final perseverance, * and the grace always to have recourse to thee, * O Mother of Perpetual Help

Pray Three Hail Marys

Priest: Thou hast been made for us, O Lady, a refuge.

People: A helper in need and tribulation.

Priest:: Let us pray: O Lord Jesus Christ, Who hast given us Thine own Mother Mary, whose glorious image we venerate to be a Mother ever ready to help us; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who constantly implore her help may merit always to experience the fruits of Thy Redemption, Thou Who livest and reignest world without end.

People: Amen

Prayer of Saint Alphonsus

Most Holy and Immaculate Virgin and my Mother, Mary, * to thee Who art the Mother of my Lord, the Queen of the world, * the Advocate, the Hope, and the Refuge of sinners, * I have recourse today, * I who am the most miserable of all. * I render thee my most humble homage, O Great Queen, * and I thank thee for all the graces * thou hast obtained for me until now, * and in particular for having saved me from hell which I have so often deserved. * I love thee, O most Amiable Lady; and for the love which I bear thee, * I promise to serve thee always * and to do all in my power to make others also love thee. * I place in thee all my hopes * and I confide my salvation to thy care. * O Mother of Mercy. * And since thou art so powerful with God, * deliver me from all temptations, * or, rather, obtain for me the strength to triumph over them until death. * Of thee I ask a perfect love for Jesus Christ; * through thee I hope to die a good death. * O my Mother, * by the love which thou bearest to God, * I beseech thee to help me at all times * but especially at the last moment of my life. * Leave me not, I beseech thee, * until thou seest me safe in heaven, * blessing thee and singing thy mercies for all eternity. So I hope, so may it be. * Amen. 

Act of Consecration 
(to be said once each month)

Desiring to consecrate myself entirely * to the service of the ever Blessed Virgin Mary, * from whom after God, * I expect all help and assistance * in life and in death, * I unit myself with the members * of this pious confraternity, * which has been erected * in honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.

As my special patron * I choose the glorious St. Alphonsus, * that he may obtain for me * a true and lasting devotion * to the ever Blessed Virgin, * who is honored by so sweet a name.

I promise, moreover, * to renew my consecration * to the Mother of God and to St. Alphonsus * once a moth, * and frequently to receive the holy sacraments.

O Mother of Perpetual Help, * receive me as thy servant, * and grant that I may ever experience * thy constant motherly protection. * I promise to have recourse to thee * in all my spiritual and temporal necessities. * My holy patron, St. Alphonsus, * obtain for me * the grace of an ardent love for Jesus Christ, * and the grace of ever invoking * the Mother of Perpetual Help.

Litany of Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ graciously hear us.

God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us. 
God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.

Response: pray for us.

Holy Mary, pray for us.
Holy Mother of God, pray for us.
Holy Virgin, conceived without sin, pray for us.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us.

Response: O Mother ever help us.

We sinners call to thee, O Mother ever help us.
That we may love God with our whole hearts, O Mother ever help us.
That we may be conformable in all things to thy Divine Son, O Mother ever help us.
That we may have a tender and heartfelt devotion to thee, most holy Virgin, O Mother ever help us.
That we may hate with all our strength sin, the only evil, O Mother ever help us.

That we may frequently remember our last end, O Mother ever help us. 
That we may often and worthily receive the Most Holy Sacrament, O Mother ever help us.
that we may avoid with all our strength proximate occasions of sin, O Mother ever help us.
That we may not neglect prayer a single day of our lives, O Mother ever help us.
That we may have recourse to prayer in the hour of temptation, O Mother ever help us.

That we may generously forgive our enemies, and wish well to all men, O Mother ever help us.
That we may not defer our conversion from day to day, O Mother ever help us.
That we may zealously labor to overcome our bad habits, O Mother ever help us.
That we may live and die in the grace of God, O Mother ever help us.
In all concerns of soul and body, O Mother ever help us.

In sickness and pain, O Mother ever help us.
In struggles against the inclination of corrupt nature, O Mother ever help us.
In assaults of evil spirits, O Mother ever help us.
In temptations against the holy virtue of purity, O Mother ever help us.
In all danger of sinning, O Mother ever help us.

When we have reached the end of our earthly course, O Mother ever help us.
When lying on our deathbed, and the thought of approaching dissolution shall fill us with fear and horror, O Mother ever help us.
When in the hour of final separation from all, evil spirits shall try to drive us to despair, O Mother ever help us.
When the priest of the Lord shall give us the last absolution and blessing, O Mother ever help us.
When our relatives and friends surround our bed, weeping and praying for us, O Mother ever help us.

When our eyes grow dim, and our hearts cease to beat, O Mother ever help us.
When we breath forth our spirit into the hands of our Creator,O Mother ever help us.
When out poor soul appears before our Divine Judge, O Mother ever help us.
When the terrible judgement is about to be passed, O Mother ever help us.
When suffering in the flames of Purgatory, and longing for the vision of God, O Mother ever help us.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Pray for us, O Most Holy Mother of God

That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray:

O God, Who has willed that the Mother of Thy only begotten Son should be the perpetual help of Christians on earth, grant us the grace to call on her with confidence in all our necessities of soul and body, so that saved through her protection and assistance, we may be brought to the everlasting vision of Thy glory in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Remember, this is the time that God has from all eternity ordained for us to live. We cannot rue the circumstance in which we find ourselves within His Holy Providence. No, we must embrace the crosses of the moment as we entrust all to His Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as His consecrated slaves of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother.

As I wrote nearly seventeen months ago, we must Prepare for the Coming Persecution, and the only way to do so is to fly unto the patronage of Our Blessed Mother, now and always.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint William the Abbot, pray for us.

Saints John and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Appendix

Reviewing Holy Mother Church’s Against the Separation of Church and State

One true pope after another, dating back, oh, say, around 1500 years ago, has condemned the very thing that Ratzinger/Benedict endorses, defends, protects and promotes: the separation of Church and State.

Pope Gelasius had indeed spoken of the "two powers" that govern man, indicating that those who hold ecclesiastical office should not hold civil office. Pope Gelasius did not teach, however, that a State must not favor the Catholic Faith, a little fact overlooked by apologists of the conciliar embrace of the separation of Church and State. Indeed, Pope Gelasius wrote Emperor Anastasius in the year 494 A.D. to remind him of the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal, keeping in mind that even in the exercise of purely temporal power the Last End of man must be kept in mind:

There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment. You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation. In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your will. 

If the ministers of religion, recognizing the supremacy granted you from heaven in matters affecting the public order, obey your laws, lest otherwise they might obstruct the course of secular affairs by irrelevant considerations, with what readiness should you not yield them obedience to whom is assigned the dispensing of the sacred mysteries of religion. Accordingly, just as there is no slight danger m the case of the priests if they refrain from speaking when the service of the divinity requires, so there is no little risk for those who disdain - which God forbid -when they should obey. And if it is fitting that the hearts of the faithful should submit to all priests in general who properly administer divine affairs, how much the more is obedience due to the bishop of that see which the Most High ordained to be above all others, and which is consequently dutifully honored by the devotion of the whole Church.  (Letter to Emperor Anastasius)

But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1964.)

55. The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852. (Condemned Proposition in The Syllabus of Errors, 1864.)

As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.

Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate. . . . To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error (Pope Leo XII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

There are others, somewhat more moderate though not more consistent, who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the divine law, but not the morality of the State, for that in public affairs the commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely disregarded in the framing of laws. Hence follows the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State. But the absurdity of such a position is manifest. Nature herself proclaims the necessity of the State providing means and opportunities whereby the community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say, according to the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness and justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no attention to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enactments. Besides, those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but still more to consult the welfare of men's souls in the wisdom of their legislation. But, for the increase of such benefits, nothing more suitable can be conceived than the laws which have God for their author; and, therefore, they who in their government of the State take no account of these laws abuse political power by causing it to deviate from its proper end and from what nature itself prescribes. And, what is still more important, and what We have more than once pointed out, although the civil authority has not the same proximate end as the spiritual, nor proceeds on the same lines, nevertheless in the exercise of their separate powers they must occasionally meet. For their subjects are the same, and not infrequently they deal with the same objects, though in different ways. Whenever this occurs, since a state of conflict is absurd and manifestly repugnant to the most wise ordinance of God, there must necessarily exist some order or mode of procedure to remove the occasions of difference and contention, and to secure harmony in all things. This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life  (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, June 20, 1888.)

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

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. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

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." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

By the way, one of the correlative proofs of how the conciliar "popes" have defected from the Catholic Faith is that they have done what our true Roman Pontiffs have never ceased to do, to "refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. To refresh your memories on this point, please see Mocking Pope Saint Pius X and Our Lady of Fatima.

But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church [according to the Modernists] does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei  (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they operate, the human person is lead, not toward progress, but towards death. 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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Whilst the new rulers of Portugal were affording such numerous and awful examples of the abuse of power, you know with what patience and moderation this Apostolic See has acted towards them. We thought that We ought most carefully to avoid any action that could even have the appearance of hostility to the Republic. For We clung to the hope that its rulers would one day take saner counsels and would at length repair, by some new agreement, the injuries inflicted on the Church. In this, however, We have been altogether disappointed, for they have now crowned their evil work by the promulgation of a vicious and pernicious Decree for the Separation of Church and State. But now the duty imposed upon Us by our Apostolic charge will not allow Us to remain passive and silent when so serious a wound has been inflicted upon the rights and dignity of the Catholic religion. Therefore do We now address you, Venerable Brethren, in this letter and denounce to all Christendom the heinousness of this deed.

3. At the outset, the absurd and monstrous character of the decree of which We speak is plain from the fact that it proclaims and enacts that the Republic shall have no religion, as if men individually and any association or nation did not depend upon Him who is the Maker and Preserver of all things; and then from the fact that it liberates Portugal from the observance of the Catholic religion, that religion, We say, which has ever been that nation's greatest safeguard and glory, and has been professed almost unanimously by its people. So let us take it that it has been their pleasure to sever that close alliance between Church and State, confirmed though it was by the solemn faith of treaties. Once this divorce was effected, it would at least have been logical to pay no further attention to the Church, and to leave her the enjoyment of the common liberty and rights which belong to every citizen and every respectable community of peoples. Quite otherwise, however, have things fallen out. This decree bears indeed the name of Separation, but it enacts in reality the reduction of the Church to utter want by the spoliation of her property, and to servitude to the State by oppression in all that touches her sacred power and spirit. . . .

Accordingly, under the admonition of the duty of Our Apostolic office that, in the face of such audacity on the part of the enemies of God, We should most vigilantly protect the dignity and honor of religion and preserve the sacred rights of the Catholic Church, We by our Apostolic authority denounce, condemn, and reject the Law for the Separation of Church and State in the Portuguese Republic. This law despises God and repudiates the Catholic faith; it annuls the treaties solemnly made between Portugal and the Apostolic See, and violates the law of nature and of her property; it oppresses the liberty of the Church, and assails her divine Constitution; it injures and insults the majesty of the Roman Pontificate, the order of Bishops, the Portuguese clergy and people, and so the Catholics of the world. And whilst We strenuously complain that such a law should have been made, sanctioned, and published, We utter a solemn protest against those who have had a part in it as authors or helpers, and, at the same time, We proclaim and denounce as null and void, and to be so regarded, all that the law has enacted against the inviolable rights of the Church. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

Let the Princes and Rulers of peoples remember this truth, and let them consider whether it is a prudent and safe idea for governments or for states to separate themselves from the holy religion of Jesus Christ, from which their authority receives such strength and support. Let them consider again and again, whether it is a measure of political wisdom to seek to divorce the teaching of the Gospel and of the Church from the ruling of a country and from the public education of the young. Sad experience proves that human authority fails where religion is set aside. The fate of our first parent after the Fall is wont to come also upon nations. As in his case, no sooner had his will turned from God than his unchained passions rejected the sway of the will; so, too, when the rulers of nations despise divine authority, in their turn the people are wont to despise their human authority. There remains, of course, the expedient of using force to repress popular risings; but what is the result? Force can repress the body, but it cannot repress the souls of men. (Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, November 1, 1914.)

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. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world.

In your country [Germany under the Third Reich], Venerable Brethren, voices are swelling into a chorus urging people to leave the Church, and among the leaders there is more than one whose official position is intended to create the impression that this infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a signal and meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State. Secret and open measures of intimidation, the threat of economic and civic disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain classes of Catholic functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right and dignity. Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay so dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss, there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: "Begone, Satan! For it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. iv. 10). And turning to the Church, he shall say: "Thou, my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly promises or threats, I betray the vows of my baptism." As to those who imagine that they can reconcile exterior infidelity to one and the same Church, let them hear Our Lord's warning: -- "He that shall deny me before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke xii. 9).(Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)

What has been the fruit of the counterfeit church of conciliarism's "reconciliation" with the thesis deemed "absolutely false" by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906?

Catholic civic officials who have felt free to ignore the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have promoted divorce, contraception, sterilization, abortion and, among other evils, perversity as "rights" that must be "recognized" and protected by the civil law? The names of such men are legion. Legion.