Live in a World Unhinged from Christ the King and His true Church? Live in a World Filled with Unhinged People

The devil’s hatred for God has always been such as to inspire in fallen creatures to rebel against their First Cause and Last End, and he has always inspired fallen creatures to forget that they are made in the image and likeness of the Most Holy Trinity and thus to hate and then to act violently against each other, starting with the murder of Abel by his brother Cain:

[1] And Adam knew Eve his wife: who conceived and brought forth Cain, saying: I have gotten a man through God. [2] And again she brought forth his brother Abel. And Abel was a shepherd, and Cain a husbandman. [3] And it came to pass after many days, that Cain offered, of the fruits of the earth, gifts to the Lord. [4] Abel also offered of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat: and the Lord had respect to Abel, and to his offerings. [5] But to Cain and his offerings he had no respect: and Cain was exceedingly angry, and his countenance fell.

[6] And the Lord said to him: Why art thou angry? and why is thy countenance fallen? [7] If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? but if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door? but the lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it. [8] And Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go forth abroad. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and slew him.[9]And the Lord said to Cain: Where is thy brother Abel? And he answered, I know not: am I my brother's keeper? [10] And he said to him: What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth.

[11] Now, therefore, cursed shalt thou be upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth and received the blood of thy brother at thy hand. [12] When thou shalt till it, it shall not yield to thee its fruit: a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth. [13] And Cain said to the Lord: My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon. [14] Behold thou dost cast me out this day from the face of the earth, and I shall be hidden from thy face, and I shall be a vagabond and a fugitive on the earth: every one, therefore, that findeth me, shall kill me. [15] And the Lord said to him: No, it shall not be so: but whosoever shall kill Cain, shall be punished sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him. (Genesis 4: 1-15.)

Husbands have battled wives, wives have battled husbands, parents and children have battled each other. King David himself was opposed by his own son Absalom. David, of whose own house Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born of His Most Blessed Mother, wept over his rebellious son's death because he was concerned over the state of the poor's soul when died, knowing that he had rebelled against the Fourth Commandment itself:

And when he had passed, and stood still, Chusai appeared: and coming up he said: I bring good tidings, my lord, the king, for the Lord hath judged for thee this day from the hand of all that have risen up against thee.  32 And the king said to Chusai: Is the young man Absalom safe? And Chusai answering him, said: Let the enemies of my lord, the king, and all that rise against him unto evil, be as the young man is.  33 The king therefore being much moved, went up to the high chamber over the gate, and wept. And as he went he spoke in this manner: My son Absalom, Absalom my son: would to God that I might die for thee, Absalom my son, my son Absalom. (2 Kings 18: 31-33.)

Conflict between human beings is just part of the consequences of Original Sin and of the Actual Sins of men.

There was conflict aplenty even during the years of Christendom. Intrigue fueled by personal ambitions, rivalries of one sort or another or by motivations of revenge were all too common in royal courts, including the most important royal court on the face of the earth, the papal household. Christian kings and emperors made war upon each other. Infighting among generals and their officers of the same army shaped the outcome of battles. Indeed, as depicted fairly accurately in For Greater Glory there was great mistrust among the leaders of the Cristeros in Mexico.

Additionally, of course, human nature being what it is, sloth, one of the seven deadly or capital sins, manifested itself all too frequently even during the High Middle Ages as those who served at court or in various administrative capacities in the service of the crown and the enforcement of laws preferred to exert the least possible effort just to "get through" a given day.

All of this having been noted, however, it is also true that men in the era of Christendom were not divided on matters of Faith and Morals, on matters of First and Last Things. While they may have had great difficulties on occasion in keeping God's laws and thus of practicing the Holy Faith well, they nevertheless knew what was right and wrong and were united in their beliefs in the tenets of the Catholic Faith.

Pope Pius XII noted this in Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939:

It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)

It was Martin Luther's rebellion against the Divine Plan that God Himself had instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church that divided men over First and Last Things, thus paving the way for the triumph of secular substitutes for religious faith in general just as Luther had substituted his own heretical views of Christianity in the place of the true Faith, which is the only foundation of personal and social order.

Pope Leo XIII explained this very succinctly in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: "When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay."

But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law.  (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

The modern state has become a sort of secular church replete with its own creedal beliefs and possessing an insatiably voracious appetite to exercise near total control over its citizens, who are subjected to a level of slavery by means of confiscatory tax powers and, more recently, by state-coerced censorship of those who dare to dissent from the state's orthodoxy du jour. However, the modern state is a corruption of the true nature of the state, which is not the same thing as a particular form of government that happens to constitute its civil authority, which must be founded on right principles in order for it to work properly in the pursuit of the common good here on Earth and to aid the true Church in the promotion of a cultural environment in which its citizens can best save their souls.

It is a very short step from Martin Luther's hatred for the Catholic Church, which is nothing other than a hatred of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself as He is indivisible from the Church he founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, to the anti-Theism of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, to the hatred of human beings whose existence is an "inconvience," and from there to the diabolical dehumanization and depersonalization of human beings, who are the zenith of God's creative handiwork He has endowed them with a rational, immortal soul that has been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

The Jacobins, in essence, denied the humanity of anyone they deemed to be "counterrevolutionaries," a group which included royalists, the clergy, and believing Catholics who resisted their anti-Theistic deification of man and the "goddess of reason," and the Bolsheviks turned their own "counterrevolutionaries" into "non-persons."

Alas, this dehumanization of others has not been confined to the the social revolutionaries of Europe as even long before Karl Marx and the British utilitarians in the so-called "civilized" West, many Americans dehumanized blacks and American Indians. Andrew Jackson, a Jacobin at heart despite the miracle that had been wrought for him by Our Lady of Prompt Succor at the Battle of New Orleans on January 15, 1815, hated both blacks and Indians, and he was far, far from alone in that hatred. 

Indeed, a concomitant hared of Catholics among the nativists of the middle to the latter part of the Ninetenth Century subjected many of of our religious ancestors on these shores. Catholic immigrants to the United States of America, first those from Ireland and then, after the War between the States and during the Kulturkampf in Germany and the Risorgimento in Italy, those from eastern and southern Europe, plunged headlong into this spectator sport of electoral politics as it provided them with the fastest means of upward social and economic mobility at a time when there was overt--and sometimes quite violent--discrimination against them on the part of know-nothings and other assorted naturalists associated with Freemasonry.

It is only the adversary who inspires men to hate each other in full violation of the following admonition of Our Blessed Lord Saviour Jesus Christ:

Give to him that asketh of thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away.  43 You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy.  44 But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you:  45 That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.

46 For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this?  47 And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this?  48 Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5: 42-48.)

Well, the dethroning of God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church and the subsequent deification of man by the forces of Freemasonry has led to a warfare against the humanity of the innocent child in the womb by the use of such dehumanizing terms as "miscellaneous mass of cells" or a "product" of conception.

Similarly, the medical industry's manufactured money-making myth of "brain death" has resulted in the dehumanization of a living human being every much as referring to a preborn baby merely as a "product of conception" or a "miscellaneous mass of cells" or "potential human being" even though there is nothing "potential" about a human being inside of his mother's womb who has his own specific DNA and whose growth to birth can be stopped by others only by killing him.

Also, to use the word fetus, which may be biologically accurate, to refer a preborn child is to make a living human being into a non-person, and it is the dehumanization of the innocent child in his mother's womb that is directly responsible for the upsurge in violent attacks against human beings throughout the world, especially here in some of this country's major cities. To fail to see the Divine impress in the unseen baby in the womb is but a short step to failing to see and thus respect the Divine impress in souls of everyone else, which is why we are all at risk today of some random attack by those who think nothing of killing other human beings for sport as so many mothers think nothing of killing their own flesh and blood. 

These random attacks even by native-born citizens of the United States of America are on the increase in many parts of the nation because nihilist ideologues have decided that is “racist” to punish perpetrators of violent crime committed by members of various minority groups and/or by those who are mentally ill.

Consider some of the acts of mindlessly random violence against ordinary people going about their own business on the streets of the Boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn within the City of New York in just the past several days:

An unhinged homeless man accused of slashing a young costume designer during an unprovoked Soho street attack — cutting her throat with a broken bottle so deeply her muscle and veins were exposed — was previously accused of attempted murder as part of an arson case, prosecutors revealed Wednesday.

“I’m going to kill a b—-!” Muslim Brunson screamed during Monday’s bottle attack, prosecutors said during the suspect’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Brunson allegedly slashed 25-year-old Megan “Mae” Berg in the throat with the jagged shards so deeply that witnesses saw “muscle, tissue and veins” exposed during the caught-on-camera attack, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Siobhan Carty said.

Medics rushed Berg to Bellevue Hospital, where she needed “life saving surgery,”  was treated for extensive blood loss and was on a ventilator overnight in the intensive care unit, Carty said. The victim’s mother told the Daily News Tuesday Berg was now in critical but stable condition.

NYPD officers and detectives investigate the unprovoked slashing of a 25-year-old woman at Broome and Wooster Sts. Monday. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)

Brunson’s out-of-state criminal history came to light as Judge Beverly Tatham ordered him held without bail during his arraignment on attempted murder, assault, and attempted assault charges for the gruesome Monday afternoon slashing.

“He is a definite flight risk,” Carty told the judge, adding that the ex-con has ties to Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina and has a “demonstrated contempt for law enforcement.”

In 2002, Brunson, 46, was charged with attempted murder and arson in Baltimore and committed to a psychiatric institution, Carty said.

On Monday afternoon, Brunson allegedly threw a glass bottle at a 29-year-old woman near the corner of Broome and Wooster Sts. The bottle smashed against the back of the woman’s head.

A broken bottle is pictured at the scene of the unprovoked slashing at Broome and Wooster Sts. in SoHo Monday. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)

“I’m going to kill a b—h!” Brunson was heard screaming as he picked up the broken bottle and chased the woman down the block, prosecutors charge. During the chase, he stopped mid-course and zeroed in on Berg instead, who was scouting out boutiques for her boss when she was attacked, authorities say.

Brunson, who was wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the NYPD logo, was captured about six blocks away. He admitted to the attack and identified Berg as the second woman he attacked, prosecutors say.

He seemed agitated and threatened a witness who helped police identify him as the slasher, prosecutors said.

Defense attorney Mildred Morillo of NYC Defenders said she had spoken to both Brunson and his mother and said the slashing suspect was in the throes of a mental health crisis.

Megan Berg was allegedly slashed by Muslim Brunson in Soho Monday. (Facebook)

It has been repeatedly documented by police and prosecutors that Brunson hears voices that order him to harm people.

“It is clear that he is suffering a mental health crisis,” Morillo said, comparing Brunson’s condition to someone suffering the flu. “No one ever blames someone with a stomach virus for vomiting.”

Tatham ordered Brunson to undergo a psychiatric exam.

The NYPD has responded to four calls for an emotionally disturbed person involving Brunson showing signs of extreme mental illness, sources said.

On Aug. 17, 2019, Brunson told cops he was hearing voices telling him to harm others. There were two instances in December 2020 when police were called about Brunson and he again said he was hearing voices that encouraged him to stop taking his medications and attack people.

On June 18, 2022, police responded again to a call for Brunson, which was resolved when he took his medications.

In New York, Brunson has five prior arrests dating back to 2019, four of them for assault, police said.

In September 2019, Brunson approached a 13-year-old boy in the Liberty Ave. subway station in Brooklyn and asked about his phone, then, as a C train pulled into the station, grabbed the phone from the teen and jumped aboard, according to a criminal complaint.

The teen followed, chasing Brunson through the cars of the train as it headed towards the Van Siclen Ave. stop in Brownsville. Once in the station, Brunson got off, with the teen in pursuit, then got back on, pushing the teen when he tried to follow him aboard, court papers say.

Bail was set in that case but Brunson was later released without bail and the case was moved to mental health court. Brunson went on to make 36 appearances in the mental health court to update the judge on his progress in the program, which included attending therapy, according to a source.

Megan Berg was allegedly slashed by Muslim Brunson (pictured) in Soho Monday. Brunson is pictured here in policy custody after the stabbing. (Dean Moses / AMNY)

Brunson pleaded guilty to robbery but had a deal that if he completed his mental health program he would not serve jail time, said a source.

But Brunson missed at least one court date and so a warrant was issued. He was arrested on the warrant and jailed from Feb. 2 to July 22, 2021, when he was convicted of robbery after pleading in mental health court and released pending sentencing.

While awaiting sentencing, Brunson committed a felony assault, slamming an off-duty NYPD civilian employee’s head into a subway pole aboard a Brooklyn-bound No. 4 train near the Fulton St. station about 11 p.m. July 4, 2022, fracturing the victim’s cheekbone and an orbital bone.

Two days later an NYPD detective saw Brunson on Canal St. near Mercer St. and recognized him as being wanted in connection with the attack. When the cop went to arrest Brunson, the suspect kicked the cop in the right leg and spit on him and other officers that arrived to assist, according to court papers.

The two cases were wrapped into one conviction, and as required by state law, the sentences for both the Brooklyn and Manhattan cases were to be served concurrently, said a court source. Brunson was sentenced to eight months in prison for both crimes, according to court records.

He’s been free since February 2023 and told police upon his arrest Monday that he’d only been in the city for the last 60 days, prosecutors said.

If convicted of the top charge in Monday’s attack, Brunson faces between eight and 25 years in prison, said prosecutors. (Suspect who slashed costume designer's neck in Soho previously accused of arson, attempted murder.)

A man was stabbed numerous times during a broad-daylight mugging Wednesday afternoon in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, cops said.

The 33-year-old victim was walking at 32nd St. and Fifth Ave., just a block from the tourist-destination Empire State Building, around 12:31 p.m. when an unidentified man pushed him to the ground and stabbed him three times in the neck. The attacker then grabbed around $10 out of the victim’s pockets before fleeing on foot.

EMS transported the victim, who did not know his attacker, to Bellevue Hospital where he was listed in stable condition.

There were no arrests. Police are still trying to track down the assailant, who was described as dark-skinned, 6-feet-2 and wearing a black hat and black sweatshirt. (Man, 33, stabbed in neck repeatedly in Midtown Manhattan mugging.)

BENSONHURST, Brooklyn (WABC) -- A meat-cleaver-wielding man who stabbed and slashed four children in a Brooklyn home on Sunday was shot by police after one of the young victims managed to call 911 for help, police said.

The victims were eight, 11, 13 and 16 years old. The 11-year-old girl was able to call 911 for help. The girl told 911 she did not know her address, but the call center used technology to pinpoint her location and quickly dispatch police to the scene on 84th Street in Bensonhurst.

"The 11 year old caller stated that she and her siblings had been stabbed by her uncle. She did not know her address," said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

When police arrived, they heard screams coming from behind the door to their left, and immediately began forcing their way into the apartment.

Once the officers entered, they encountered the man standing near the entrance holding a large meat cleaver covered in blood. Police say blood was also seen on the floor and walls of the hall.

"The officers ordered the man to drop the weapon several times. He refused and advanced towards them. Two officers discharged their firearms, firing seven total rounds between them and striking the subject, ending the threat," Tisch added.

According to Tisch, the police-involved shooting was captured on body-worn camera video.

"Police came in and did what they had to do to save the children. Terrible," said resident Carl Caltabiano.

Authorities say the suspect, Luan Chen, 49, had a history of mental illness.

A fifth child, a boy, was able to escape from the house unharmed.

Chi Lam tells Eyewitness News that her father-in-law took the frightened child into his home and cared for him until it was safe. She says the boy was shivering, scared and crying.

"We gave him a coat and some socks. He was wearing slippers, we gave him water and a sandwich," Lam says.

The girls are all expected to survive. Their uncle was rushed to the hospital in critical condition after being shot.

Two knives were recovered at the scene, including the large meat cleaver that the suspect was holding when police arrived. An additional bloody knife was found in another room.

Although the exact relationship is still under investigation, authorities say the suspect is related to the victims. According to family members, the suspect has a history of mental illness.

"Here is the bottom line. Right now, we have four children who are still alive because of the quick-thinking and decisive actions of your NYPD officers and EMTs," Tisch said.

Authorities are now trying to determine the motive of the attack. (NYPD officers shoot man armed with meat cleaver to end attack on 4 girls in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.)

Although longtime readers of this website know that I focus on root causes and not the “trees” in the forest, there is one very relevant proximate cause to why this problem is so pronounced within the City of New York and it dates back to the 1970s when then New York State Governor Hugh Leo Carey,” who was the first to coin  the “I am personally opposed to abortion, but” canard before belatedly changing his mind in 1989 six years after leaving office, “solved” the Empire State’s fiscal crisis by closing most of the state’s mental hospitals and letting the mentally ill roam the streets thereafter, thus causing the decades-old problem of homeless in his own native City of New York.

As the commander of the Troop K in Salt Point, New York, off of the Taconic State Parkway said me after midnight of Sunday, May 10, 1981, as I had to bade my time after my car’s transmission had dropped out on the Taconic State Parkway until I could get a train out of Poughkeepsie down to New York City when we were talking about the city’s homeless crisis, “You what these people have that neither you nor I have? They have a slip of paper certifying that they are sane that they got when they were released from the funny farms.”

The problem has gotten worse in the decades since there, especially after the reprobate Figlio di Sfachim, Andrew Mark Cuomo, signed the George Soros-inspired “cashless bail” law  in 2019 that has made a mockery of criminal justice throughout the State of New York as career criminals are arrested after committing crimes, turned back out onto the streets after being arraigned and then, in all too many cases, commit even more crimes, sometimes just hours after they get out of their arraignment hearing for another crime. Current Federal Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin, who ran unsuccessfully against the pro-abortion Catholic Governor Kathleen Hochul, in 2022, summarized the problem as follows on December 3, 2021:

Last weekend, a man assaulted a police officer with a stolen car on the RFK Bridge just three weeks after being released without bail following his arrest on third-degree grand larceny and third-degree criminal possession of stolen property charges.

A man facing felony arson charges went on to murder a mother and her daughter not even a week after being released without bail.

Another New York City man bragged to the police that he was going to be released without bail as he was arrested three times in 36 hours, and he was right. 

An ex-convict who was convicted of attempting to kill a police officer was recently re-arrested for — you guessed it — attacking another NYPD officer and was freed without bail.

And these cases happened just over the past few weeks.

This problem isn’t a left-vs.-right issue. Since announcing my campaign for governor, I have been traveling throughout the state. Almost everywhere I go, I hear from people from all walks of life, regardless of political leanings, that they want cashless bail repealed.

Across New York, communities large and small are grappling with spikes in violent crime, police-budget cuts and political leaders hostile to law enforcement while taking the side of criminals.

Meanwhile, the city of Rochester is experiencing its deadliest year on record with no end to the bloodshed in sight. It’s beyond frustrating to see our once-quiet neighborhoods turn into war zones while the Democrats in Albany, for the sake of appeasing their far-left Twitter followers, ignore the pleas of everyday New Yorkers affected by the crime waves.

Fixing the violence plaguing our streets and keeping our communities safe starts at the top. Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature need to immediately repeal the fatally flawed cashless-bail law and give judges the power to keep criminals behind bars rather than roaming the streets.

Securing our streets is an issue that matters to each and every one of us, and there is plenty of bipartisan support for reforms that will empower law enforcement to do their jobs safely and effectively.

Our state has been forced to suffer through two long years of these radical, boneheaded policies, and New Yorkers have had enough. They’re tired of the attacks on our legal system, our brave men and women in blue and, most important, our public safety. If Albany doesn’t act, New Yorkers will — at the ballot box. (New York cashless bail follows with multiple injuries, deaths.)

Unfortunately, not even well-meaning public servants such as Lee Zeldin understand that there can never be true justice in a world that is unhinged from the Social Reign of Christ the King and His true Church as Freemasonic religious indifferentism leads to differences on matters of supernatural and natural truth that result in chaos and, ultimately, the nihilism that afflicts the world today where unhinged people, agitated by the bread and circuses of the false opposites of naturalism, think that they are “accomplishing” something by vandalizing Tesla dealerships and/or Tesla vehicles owned by ordinary people or by justifying the cold-blooded assassination of insurance executive Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, whose cowardly act has made him a celebrated cult figure in this unhinged world of ours.

Even sadder, of course, is the fact that millions of innocent preborn children continue to be killed by chemical and surgical abortion, and the acceptance of this invisible genocide has made the all-too-visible crimes discussed above more possible?

For example, how many people even care to know the incalculable death toll of the human pesticide, RU-486, the abortion pill:

ONTARIO (LifeSiteNews) — Chemical abortions using mifepristone have skyrocketed in Ontario since the drug was introduced in 2017.

According to research published on April 6 by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), abortions using the drug mifepristone have increased from 8 percent in 2017 to 56 percent in 2022.

“The impact of this rapid change in abortion practice on the availability of abortion services, especially for rural and remote communities, is not well understood,” the research explained. “Mifepristone availability led to a rapid increase in the number of abortion providers, including providers in rural areas.”

According to the research, of the 175,000 women seeking abortions between 2017 and 2022, 84,000 of them underwent chemical abortions.

At this time, increasing numbers of Canadian pharmacies began dispensing the dangerous drug, with the percentage of faculties filling a prescription for the drug increasing from three percent in 2017 to 20 percent in 2022.

“This is disturbing on so many levels,” Campaign Life Coalition’s Pete Baklinski wrote on X. “The abortion pill is used to target and kill the preborn human being living within his or her mother.”

“The abortion pill is a murder weapon of mass destruction,” he continued. “And, it is fast becoming the go-to weapon against the smallest and most vulnerable among us – the preborn child.”

Mifegymiso, which became available to Canadians in 2017, is now both legal and free in Alberta, allowing many women to kill their unborn babies at home without any medical supervision, which often results in severe injuries to the mother in addition to the trauma of seeing their murdered baby.

Chemical abortion typically consists of two drugs taken at different times. The pregnant mother first takes mifepristone orally in the form of a pill. This drug blocks the mother’s progesterone, a hormone needed to sustain the tiny new life attached to her uterine wall.

Without progesterone, the mother’s pregnancy-sustaining mechanism shuts down. The new life is ended. Some 24-48 hours later, the woman orally ingests the second drug. Misoprostol initiates powerful uterine contractions that cause the woman to bleed heavily as she expels her dead baby.

While the drugs are touted as the “safest” and easiest way to kill unborn babies, recently revealed data has shown that over 100 Canadian women have been severely harmed by the abortion pill protocol since 2017.

In fact, according to Canada’s adverse reaction online database, one 19-year-old, along with her baby, tragically died in the wake of using the deadly pills.

Abortion pills can also lead to various complications and are 50 percent more likely to require a visit to the emergency room compared to surgical abortions. The drugs are especially dangerous in ectopic pregnancy.

Surprisingly, abortion pill vendors are not required by law to give women any in-person evaluation or ultrasound as a safeguard to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy before giving out the abortion pill.

Furthermore, as LifeSiteNews previously reported, many women have shared traumatizing stories of giving birth to fully formed babies, some of whom have a heartbeat.

One woman recalled: “I felt her come out.” Another: “[N]othing could’ve prepared me for seeing her body. It was the color of my own skin.”

An increasing number of women are posting photos of their babies online after aborting them using abortion pills. The photos make it clear, like no other evidence could, that abortion activists are lying to women. (Chemical abortions have skyrocketed in Ontario since introduction of mifepristone.)

As the Prophet Osee noted:

Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel, for the Lord shall enter into judgment with the inhabitants of the land: for there is no truth, and there is no mercy, and there is no knowledge of God in the land.  2 Cursing, and lying, and killing, and theft, and adultery have overflowed, and blood hath touched blood.  3 Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth in it shall languish with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of the air: yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be gathered together. (Osee 4: 1-3.)

The Prophet Osee’s words described life among the Biblical Jew five hundred years before the Nativity of Our Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but they also describe life contemporaneously in the post-Christian West.

There is no truth, and there is now mercy, and there is no knowledge of God in the land.

Pope Leo XIII amplified this truth in his encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, and in his encyclical letter on social reform, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891:

But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.

When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.

Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil. On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.

What refers to domestic life in the teaching of the naturalists is almost all contained in the following declarations: that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can rightly be revoked by the will of those who made them, and that the civil rulers of the State have power over the matrimonial bond; that in the education of youth nothing is to be taught in the matter of religion as of certain and fixed opinion; and each one must be left at liberty to follow, when he comes of age, whatever he may prefer. To these things the Freemasons fully assent; and not only assent, but have long endeavored to make them into a law and institution. For in many countries, and those nominally Catholic, it is enacted that no marriages shall be considered lawful except those contracted by the civil rite; in other places the law permits divorce; and in others every effort is used to make it lawful as soon as may be. Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract -- that is into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)

But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. She lays down precepts yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendliness and good feeling. The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death. Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery. The great truth which we learn from nature herself is also the grand Christian dogma on which religion rests as on its foundation -- that, when we have given up this present life, then shall we really begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place of exile, and not as our abiding place. As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them -- so far as eternal happiness is concerned -- it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright. Jesus Christ, when He redeemed us with plentiful redemption, took not away the pains and sorrows which in such large proportion are woven together in the web of our mortal life. He transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions of merit; and no man can hope for eternal reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints of his Savior. "If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him." Christ's labors and sufferings, accepted of His own free will, have marvelously sweetened all suffering and all labor. And not only by His example, but by His grace and by the hope held forth of everlasting recompense, has He made pain and grief more easy to endure; "for that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."

Therefore, those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles; that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ -- threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord -- and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess. The chief and most excellent rule for the right use of money is one the heathen philosophers hinted at, but which the Church has traced out clearly, and has not only made known to men's minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have a right to use money as one ills. Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary. "It is lawful," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence.'' But if the question be asked: How must one's possessions be used? -- the Church replies without hesitation in he words of the same holy Doctor: "Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. Whence the apostle saith, 'Command the rich of this world . . to offer with no stint, to apportion largely'." True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life, "for no one ought to live other than becomingly." But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. "Of that which remaineth, give alms." It is duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity -- a duty not enforced by human law. But the laws and judgments of men must yield place to the laws and judgments of Christ the true God, who in many ways urges on His followers the practice of almsgiving -- "It is more blessed to give than to receive"; and who will count a kindness done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself -- "As long as you did it to one of My least brethren you did it to Me. "To sum up, then, what has been said: Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others. "He that hath a talent," said St. Gregory the Great, "let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility hereof with his neighbor."

As for those who possess not the gifts of fortune, they are taught by the Church that in God's sight poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in earning their bread by labor. This is enforced by what we see in Christ Himself, who, "whereas He was rich, for our sakes became poor''; and who, being the Son of God, and God Himself, chose to seem and to be considered the son of a carpenter -- nay, did not disdain to spend a great part of His life as a carpenter Himself. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?"

From contemplation of this divine Model, it is more easy to understand that the true worth and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness. Nay, God Himself seems to incline rather to those who suffer misfortune; for Jesus Christ calls the poor "blessed"; He lovingly invites those in labor and grief to come to Him for solace; and He displays the tenderest charity toward the lowly and the oppressed. These reflections cannot fail to keep down the pride of the well-to-do, and to give heart to the unfortunate; to move the former to be generous and the latter to be moderate in their desires. Thus, the separation which pride would set up tends to disappear, nor will it be difficult to make rich and poor join hands in friendly concord.

But, if Christian precepts prevail, the respective classes will not only be united in the bonds of friendship, but also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand and feel that all men are children of the same common Father, who is God; that all have alike the same last end, which is God Himself, who alone can make either men or angels absolutely and perfectly happy; that each and all are redeemed and made sons of God, by Jesus Christ, "the first-born among many brethren"; that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace belong to the whole human race in common, and that from none except the unworthy is withheld the inheritance of the kingdom of Heaven. "If sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ." (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

The entire fabric of our world unhinged from Christ the King and His true Church  is based on lies and engenders hatred is itself a living violation of the Eighth Commandment’s injunction against bearing false witness. Men have been convinced of the lie that it is possible for them to realize social order without subordinating themselves to the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by His Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls. They have also been convinced of the lie that it is possible for them to live “good” lives while committing grievous sins, up to and including willful murder that goes unpunished, and that is not necessary to reform their lives by cooperating with the sanctifying offices afforded them by our mater and magister, Holy Mother Church.

It is useful to call to mind once again these prophetic words of Pope Leo XIII in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:

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.)

Indeed, as we see all too clearly from the daily headlines and instant news reports, public life is stained with crime.

Alas, public life is stained with crimes upon persons and property in a visible manner because most men, no matter where they stand along the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic naturalistic fault lines, sin, objectively speaking, with impunity in ways that do not make headlines against the binding precepts of the Divine Law and the Natural Law every day. These sins, which are very visible to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who shed droplets of His Most Precious Blood in his Agony in the Garden as He contemplated their number, gravity and enormity, make men more disposed to commit wanton acts of violence against others. Men whose lives are steeped in sin and whose only thoughts look downward upon the earth not upward towards Heaven will be prone to be agitated by the events of this passing world.  As discussed in this commentary, many such men today will even go beyond agitation and seek to do bodily harm to others.

Concluding Remarks

Human nature is wounded, although not entirely corrupted, by Original Sin, leaving the souls of the unbaptized in the grip of the devil and the souls of the baptized with its vestigial after-effects: a darkened intellect, weakened will and the overthrow of the rational, higher faculties in favor of the lower sensual appetites. The Actual Sins of men incline them to sin more and more and to blind them to anything other than what pleases them and their immediate self-interests, no matter how distorted or perverted those self-interests are in the objective order of things.

Men who do not seek to reform their lives by confessing their sins to a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance and then cooperating with the ineffable graces of the Divine Redeemer’s Most Precious Blood that flow into their souls once a priest utters the words of Absolution or, worse yet, do not even realize that there is any need to so will descend to barbarism over the course of time. There is no turning back the tide of the new barbarians who have been let loose as a direct and inevitable consequence of the fatally flawed belief that men can establish social order without reforming their lives in cooperation with the graces won for them by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and without a due submission in all that pertains to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls, upon which the entirety of social order depends.

Pope Pius XI explained in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, that men no longer acted as brothers to other men, but “as strangers, and even enemies,” that should resonate with us at all times:

Men today do not act as Christians, as brothers, but as strangers, and even enemies. The sense of man's personal dignity and of the value of human life has been lost in the brutal domination begotten of might and mere superiority in numbers. Many are intent on exploiting their neighbors solely for the purpose of enjoying more fully and on a larger scale the goods of this world. But they err grievously who have turned to the acquisition of material and temporal possessions and are forgetful of eternal and spiritual things, to the possession of which Jesus, Our Redeemer, by means of the Church, His living interpreter, calls mankind.

22. It is in the very nature of material objects that an inordinate desire for them becomes the root of every evil, of every discord, and in particular, of a lowering of the moral sense. On the one hand, things which are naturally base and vile can never give rise to noble aspirations in the human heart which was created by and for God alone and is restless until it finds repose in Him. On the other hand, material goods (and in this they differ greatly from those of the spirit which the more of them we possess the more remain to be acquired) the more they are divided among men the less each one has and, by consequence, what one man has another cannot possibly possess unless it be forcibly taken away from the first. Such being the case, worldly possessions can never satisfy all in equal manner nor give rise to a spirit of universal contentment, but must become perforce a source of division among men and of vexation of spirit, as even the Wise Man Solomon experienced: "Vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit." (Ecclesiastes i, 2, 14). . . .

There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: "They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed." (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: "Without me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5) and again, "He that gathereth not with me, scattereth." (Luke xi, 23)

28. These words of the Holy Bible have been fulfilled and are now at this very moment being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. It was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Paragraph number twenty-eight above says it all:

They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Catholicism is the sole source of human sanctification and the legitimate teacher of men, and thus possesses the sole ability to provide the foundation for a social order that can be as just as possible in a world filled with fallen men, a point that Pope Pius XI reiterated in his encyclical letter commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the issuance of Rerum Novarum, Quadregesimo Anno, May 15, 1931:

127. Yet, if we look into the matter more carefully and more thoroughly, we shall clearly perceive that, preceding this ardently desired social restoration, there must be a renewal of the Christian spirit, from which so many immersed in economic life have, far and wide, unhappily fallen away, lest all our efforts be wasted and our house be built not on a rock but on shifting sand.[62]

128. And so, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Sons, having surveyed the present economic system, We have found it laboring under the gravest of evils. We have also summoned Communism and Socialism again to judgment and have found all their forms, even the most modified, to wander far from the precepts of the Gospel.

129. "Wherefore," to use the words of Our Predecessor, "if human society is to be healed, only a return to Christian life and institutions will heal it."[63] For this alone can provide effective remedy for that excessive care for passing things that is the origin of all vices; and this alone can draw away men's eyes, fascinated by and wholly fixed on the changing things of the world, and raise them toward Heaven. Who would deny that human society is in most urgent need of this cure now?

130. Minds of all, it is true, are affected almost solely by temporal upheavals, disasters, and calamities. But if we examine things critically with Christian eyes, as we should, what are all these compared with the loss of souls? Yet it is not rash by any means to say that the whole scheme of social and economic life is now such as to put in the way of vast numbers of mankind most serious obstacles which prevent them from caring for the one thing necessary; namely, their eternal salvation. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

Most men today, however, are more concerned about the acquisition or possible loss of wealth once attained than they are about their immortal souls as they have “excessive care passing things that” are “the origin of all vices.” Only the true Faith can draw “men’s eyes, fascinated by and wholly fixated on the changing things of the world, and raise them toward Heaven.”

This world in which we live is passing away. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest ‘ere long. We must be focused on the sanctification and salvation of our own immortal souls as we keep our First Friday devotions with fervor and pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary every day, including on each First Saturday for the intentions specified by the Mother of God in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, and to Sister Lucia dos Santos in Tuy, Spain.

The following prayer, found in The Raccolta  is one that we should pray every day:

O Christ Jesus, I acknowledge Thee as the King of the universe; all that has been made hath been created for Thee. Exercise over me all Thy sovereign rights. I hereby renew the promises of my Baptism, renouncing Satan and all his works and pomps, and I engage myself to lead henceforth a truly Christian life.And in an especial manner do I undertake to bring about the triumph of the rights of God and Thy Church, so far as in me lies. Divine Heart of Jesus, I offer Thee my poor actions to obtain the acknowledment of every heart of Thy sacred kingly power. In such wise may the Kingdom of Thy peace be firmly established throoughout all the earth. Amen. (As found in (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, Number 272, p. 149.) 

Put your trust in the Most Sacred Heart of Christ the King and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as one’s state-in-life permits.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Vivat Regina Mariae Immaculate!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us. 

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

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

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger on Thursday in Passion Week

The Station at Rome, is in the Church of Saint Apollinaris, who was a disciple of St. Peter, and, afterwards. Bishop of Ravenna, and Martyr.

COLLECT

Grant, we beseech thee, O Almighty God, that the dignity of human nature, which hath been wounded by excess, may be cured by the practice of healing penance. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

EPISTLE

Lesson from the Prophet Daniel 3:34-45

In those days, Azarias prayed to the Lord, saying: O Lord our God, deliver us not up for ever, we beseech thee, for thy name’s sake, and abolish not thy covenant: and take not away thy mercy from us, for the sake of Abraham thy beloved, and Isaac thy servant, and Israel thy holy one: to whom thou hast spoken, promising that thou wouldst multiply their seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is on the sea shore. For we, O Lord, are diminished more than any nation, and are brought low in all the earth this day for our sins. Neither is there at this time prince, or leader, or prophet, or holocaust, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, or place of first-fruits before thee, that we may find thy mercy: nevertheless, in a contrite heart and humble spirit, let us be accepted. As in holocausts of rams, and bullocks, and as in thousands of fat lambs: so let our sacrifice be made in thy sight this day, that it may please thee: for there is no confusion to them that trust in thee. And now we follow thee with all our heart, and we fear thee, and seek thy face. Put us not to confusion, but deal with us according to thy meekness, and according to the multitude of thy mercies. And deliver us according to thy wonderful works, and give glory to thy name, O Lord: and let all them be confounded that shew evils to thy servants, let them be confounded in all thy might, and let their strength be broken; and let them know that thou art the Lord, the only God, and glorious over all the world, O Lord our God.

Thus did Juda, when captive in Babylon, pour forth her prayers to God, by the mouth of Azarias. Sion was desolate beyond measure; her people were in exile; her solemnities were hushed. Her children were to continue in a strange land for seventy years; after which God would be mindful of them, and lead them, by the hand of Cyrus, back to Jerusalem, when the building of the second Temple would be begun, that Temple which was to receive the Messias within its walls. What crime had Juda committed, that she should be thus severely punished? The Daughter of Sion had fallen into idolatry; she had broken the sacred engagement which made her the Spouse of her God. Her crime, however, was expiated by these seventy years of captivity, and when she returned to the land of her fathers, she never relapsed into the worship of false gods. When the Son of God came to dwell in her, he found her innocent of idolatry. But scarcely had forty years elapsed after the Ascension of this Divine Redeemer, than Juda was again an exile; not indeed led captive into Babylon, but dispersed in every nation under the sun after having first seen the massacre of thousands of her children. This time, it is not merely for seventy years, but for eighteen centuries, that she is without prince, or leader, or prophet, or holocaust, or sacrifice, or Temple. Her new crime must be greater than idolatry, for, after all these long ages of suffering and humiliation, the justice of the Father is not appeased! It is, because the blood that was shed, by the Jewish people, on Calvary, was not the blood of a man—it was the blood of a God. Yes, the very sight of the chastisement inflicted on the murderers proclaims to the world that they were deicides. Their crime was an unparalleled one; its punishment is to be so too; it is to last to the end of time, when God, for the sake of Abraham his beloved, and Isaac his servant, and Jacob his holy one, will visit Juda with an extraordinary grace, and her conversion will console the Church, whose affliction is then to be great by reason of the apostasy of many of her children. This spectacle of a whole people bearing on itself the curse of God for having crucified the Son of God, should make a Christian tremble for himself. It teaches him that Divine justice is terrible, and that the Father demands an account of the Blood of his Son, even to the last drop, from those that shed it. Let us lose no time, but go at once and, in this precious Blood, cleanse ourselves from the share we have had in the sin of the Jews; and, throwing off the chains of iniquity, let us imitate those among them whom we see, from time to time, separating themselves from their people and returning to the Messias—let us also be converts, and turn to that Jesus whose hands are stretched out on the Cross, ever ready to receive the humble penitent.

GOSPEL

Sequel of the holy Gospel according to Luke 7:36-50

At that time: One of the Pharisees desired him to eat with him. And he went into the house of the Pharisee, and sat down to meat. And behold a woman that was in the city, a sinner, when she knew that he sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment; and standing behind at his feet, she began to wash his feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. And the Pharisee, who had invited him, seeing it, spoke within himself, saying: This man, if he were a prophet, would know surely who and what manner of woman this is that touches him, that she is a sinner. And Jesus answering, said to him: Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee. But he said: Master, say it. A certain creditor had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And whereas they had not wherewith to pay, he forgave them both. Which therefore of the two loveth him most? Simon answering, said: I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And he said to him: Thou hast judged rightly. And turning to the woman, he said unto Simon: Dost thou see this woman? I entered into thy house; thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she with tears hath washed my feet and with her hairs hath wiped them. Thou gavest me no kiss; but she, since she came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but she with ointment hath anointed my feet. Wherefore I say to thee: Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much. But to whom less is forgiven, he loveth less. And he said to her: Thy sins are forgiven thee. And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves: Who is this, that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman: Thy faith hath made thee safe: go in peace.

What consolation there is for us in this Gospel, and how different are the reflections it suggests, from those we were just making upon the Epistle! The event here related does not belong to the time of our Savior’s Passion; but, during these days of mercy, does it not behoove us to glorify the meekness of that Divine Heart, which is preparing to grant pardon to countless sinners throughout the world? Besides, is not Magdalene the inseparable Companion of her dear Crucified Master, even to Calvary? Let us, then, study this admirable penitent, this type of love faithful even to death.

Magdalene had led a wicked life: as the Gospel tells us elsewhere, (Mark 16:9) seven devils had taken up their abode within her. But, no sooner has she seen and heard Jesus, than immediately she is filled with a horror for sin; divine love is enkindled within her heart; she has but one desire, and that is to make amends for her past life. Her sins have been public; her conversion must be so too. She has lived in vanity and luxury; she is resolved to give all up. Her perfumes are all to be for her God, her Jesus; that hair of hers, of which she has been so proud, shall serve to wipe his sacred feet; her eyes shall henceforth spend themselves in shedding tears of contrite love. The grace of the Holy Ghost urges her to go to Jesus. He is in the house of a Pharisee, who is giving an entertainment. To go to him now, would be exposing herself to observation.

She cares not. Taking with her an ointment of great worth, she makes her way into the feast, throws herself at Jesus’ feet, washes them with her tears, wipes them with the hair of her head, kisses them, anoints them with the ointment. Jesus himself tells us with what interior sentiments she accompanies these outward acts of respect: but even had he not spoken, her tears, her generosity, her position at his feet, tell us enough; she is heartbroken, she is grateful, she is humble: who but a Pharisee could have mistaken her?

The Pharisee, then, is shocked! His heart had within it much of that Jewish pride which is soon to crucify the Messias. He looks disdainfully at Magdalene; he is disappointed with his Guest, and murmurs out his conclusion: This man, if he were a Prophet, would surely know who and what manner of woman this is! Poor Pharisee!—if he had the spirit of God within him, he would recognize Jesus to be the promised Savior, by this wonderful condescension shown to a penitent. With all his reputation as a Pharisee, how contemptible he is, compared with this woman! Jesus would give him a useful lesson, and draws the parallel between the two—Magdalene and the Pharisee:—he passes his own divine judgment on them, and the preference is given to Magdalene. What is it that has thus transformed her, and made her deserve not only the pardon but the praise of Jesus? Her love: She hath loved her Redeemer, she hath loved him much; and therefore, she was forgiven much. A few hours ago, and this Magdalene loved but the world and its pleasures; now she cares for nothing, sees nothing, loves nothing, but Jesus: she is a Convert. Henceforward, she keeps close to her Divine Master; she is ambitious to supply his wants; but above all, she longs to see and hear him. When the hour of trial shall come, and his very Apostles dare not be with him, she will follow him to Calvary, stand at the foot of the Cross, and see Him die that has made her live. What an argument for hope is here, even for the worst of sinners! He to whom most is forgiven, is often the most fervent in love! You, then, whose souls are burdened with sins, think of your sins and confess them; but most of all, think how you may most love. Let your love be in proportion to your pardon, and doubt it not: Your sins shall be forgiven.

Bow down your heads to God.

Be propitious, O Lord, we beseech thee, to thy people; that, forsaking what displeaseth thee, they may find comfort in keeping thy law. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Let us close this Thursday of Passion Week with the following devout Hymn, taken from the Mozarabic Breviary.

HYMN

Word of the Father, that earnest into this world, and wast made Flesh! O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world! to thee do we come, and, in prostrate adoration, beseech thee to give us to drink of the Blood shed for us in thy sacred Passion.

Show unto us the marks of thy divine wounds! Let the invincible Standard of thy glorious Cross be raised on high, and, by its imperishable power, bring salvation to them that believe.

The Reed, the Nails, the Spittle, the Gall, the Crown of Thorns, the Whips, the Spear, — these were the Instruments of thy sufferings: oh! cleanse us by them from all our sins.

May the Blood that gushed from thy sacred Wounds, flow on our hearts and purify them from their stains of guilt, enable us to pass through this world without sin, and give us, in the next, the reward of bliss.

That when the resurrection day shall break upon the world, brightening it with the splendors of the eternal kingdom, we may ascend by the path that leads above, and dwell in heaven, citizens eternal.

Honor be to the Eternal God! Glory be to the One Father, and to his Only Son, together with the Holy Ghost: — the Almighty Trinity, that liveth unceasingly for ever and ever. Amen.

Let us again borrow from the Greek Church the expression of our devotion to the Holy Cross.

HYMN

(Feria V. mediæ Septimanæ.)

The wood wherewith Eliseus drew the axe from the Jordan, was a figure of thy Cross, O Jesus! wherewith thou didst draw, from the depths of their vanities, the nations that thus sing to thee in joy: Blessed art thou the God of our Fathers!

Let the heavens rejoice together with the earth, as we venerate thy Cross; for it was by thee that Angels and men are united, and sing: Blessed is the Lord our God!

Venerating the Cross of our Lord, and glorifying our Redeemer, who was nailed upon it, let us present him a threefold homage: our Compassion, like the fragrant cypress; our Faith, like the cedar; our Love, like the pine.

Thou didst stretch forth thy hands upon the Cross, to show that ’twas thou didst destroy the sin done by the hand of licentious man. Thou wast wounded with the Spear, that thou mightest wound our foe. Thou didst taste Gall, that thou mightest turn evil pleasures from us. Thy drink was Vinegar, that thou mightest be a joy to each of us.

I have eaten of the Tree of sin, and it was my ruin; I have tasted a pleasure that has caused me death. Bring me to life, O Lord! Raise me from my fall. Make me an adorer of thy Sufferings, a partner in thy Resurrection, a co-heir of them that love thee.

O Cross! thou standard of joy, thou armor invulnerable, thou glory of the Apostles, thou strength of Pontiffs, supply my languid soul with power, and oh! may I venerate thee, and thus cry out thy praises: “All ye works of the Lord, praise the Lord, extol him, above all, forever!”