Confirmations of a Different Sort

The Sacrament of Confirmation was instituted to infuse in the souls of Catholics the Seven Gifts and the Twelve Fruits of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost. Confirmation provides us with the holy unction of God the Holy Ghost, fortifying the Supernatural Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity that are infused into our souls in the Sacrament of Baptism and making us soldiers in the Army of Christ.

The Council of Florence taught the following about the effect of the Sacrament of Confirmation:

The effect of this sacrament of confirmation, because in it the Holy Spirit is given for strength, was thus given to the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, so that the Christian might boldly confess the name of Christ. (As found in Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 as The Sources of Catholic Dogma–referred to as “Denziger,” by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, No. 697, p. 222.)

Soldiers are to fight in behalf of their king. Soldiers in the Army of Christ are to fight in behalf of Christ the King and to profess His Holy Name and His Doctrine before men without being ashamed or fearful of the consequences:

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For he that shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation: the Son of man also will be ashamed of him, when he shall come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8: 36-28)

And calling in the apostles, after they had scourged them, they charged them that they should not speak at all in the name of Jesus; and they dismissed them.

And they indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. And every day they ceased not in the temple, and from house to house, to teach and preach Christ Jesus. (Acts 5: 40-42.)

If any man speak, let him speak, as the words of God. If any man minister, let him do it, as of the power, which God administereth: that in all things God may be honoured through Jesus Christ: to whom is glory and empire for ever and ever. Amen. Dearly beloved, think not strange the burning heat which is to try you, as if some new thing happened to you; But if you partake of the sufferings of Christ, rejoice that when his glory shall be revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you be reproached for the name of Christ, you shall be blessed: for that which is of the honour, glory, and power of God, and that which is his Spirit, resteth upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a railer, or a coveter of other men's things.

But if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For the time is, that judgment should begin at the house of God. And if first at us, what shall be the end of them that believe not the gospel of God? And if the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God, commend their souls in good deeds to the faithful Creator. (1 Peter 4: 11-19)

Time and time again, however, we have seen Catholics in public life throughout the world, including here in the United States of America, consider it a virtuous civil duty to separate what they call their “private beliefs” from the decisions they make as public officials. This is true both of the “left” and the “right,” and it has been stated repeatedly by Catholics who have been nominated to serve on the Federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

This has been especially true during the Senate confirmation hearings of Anthony McLeod Kennedy in 1988, John Glover Roberts in 2005 and Samuel Alito in 2006 as each has parroted, in one form or another, the same separation of faith from public duty that was championed first by New York Govenor Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1927, a year before he received the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, and in 1960 by a presidential candidate named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Smith, for his part, defended the “separation of Church and State” as a bedrock American principle in a reply, written for him by a heroic Catholic chaplain during World War I, Father Francis Duffy, who was nevertheless an arch-Americanist in the mode of Archbishop John Ireland and James Cardinal Gibbons the Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, between 1877 and 1921, to a Protestant attorney, Charles Marshall, who understand Catholic social teaching perfectly even though he rejected it out of hand:

The man closest to me in the administration of the government of the State of New York is he who bears the title of Assistant to the Governor. He had been connected with the Governor's office for thirty years, in subordinate capacities, until I promoted him to the position which makes him the sharer with me of my thought and hope and ambition in the administration of the State. He is a Protestant, a Republican, and a thirty-second-degree Mason. In my public life I have exemplified that separation of Church from State which is the faith of American Catholics today.

III

I next come to education. You admit that the Supreme Court guaranteed to Catholics the right to maintain their parochial schools; and you ask me whether they would have so ruled if it had been shown that children in parochial schools were taught that the State should show discrimination between religions, that Protestants should be recognized only as a matter of favor, that they should be intolerant to non-Catholics, and that the laws of the State could be flouted on the ground of the imaginary conflict. My summary answer is: I and all my children went to a parochial school. I never heard of any such stuff being taught or of anybody who claimed that it was. That any group of Catholics would teach it the true doctrine of Church-State relations] is unthinkable. (Alfred Smith/Father Francis Duffy Reply to Charles Marshall.)

This is quite an indictment of the Catholic educational system in the United States of America as a man who rose to the level as the first Catholic to be nominated for the presidency of the United States of America by a major political party had “never heard of any such stuff being taught or of anybody who claimed that it was.” Smith’s first reaction upon hearing of Charles Marshall’s article was, “What the [Hades] is an encyclical letter?”

In rejecting the binding nature of Catholic social teaching upon the consciences of Catholics, Smith, by way of Father Duffy, came up with the following doozy:

Similar criticism can be made of many of your quotations. But, beyond this, by what right do you ask me to assume responsibility for every statement that may be made in any encyclical letter? As you will find in the Catholic Encyclopedia (Vol. V, p. 414), these encyclicals are not articles of our faith. The Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, which you quote on the possible conflict between Church and State, is declared by Cardinal Newman to have 'no dogmatic force.' You seem to think that Catholics must be all alike in mind and in heart, as though they had been poured into and taken out of the same mould. You have no more right to ask me to defend as part of my faith every statement coming from a prelate than I should have to ask you to accept as an article of your religious faith every statement of an Episcopal bishop, or of your political faith every statement of a President of the United States. So little are these matters of the essence of my faith that I, a devout Catholic since childhood, never heard of them until I read your letter. Nor can you quote from the canons of our faith a syllable that would make us less good citizens than non-Catholics. In fact and in truth, I have been taught the spirit of tolerance, and when you, Mr. Marshall, as a Protestant Episcopalian, join with me in saying the Lord's Prayer, we both pray, not to 'My Father,' but to 'Our Father.' (Alfred Smith/Father Francis Duffy Reply to Charles Marshall.)

Alfred Smith's ghost-written open letter to Charles C. Marshall of ninety-one years ago contains many errors, one of which involves the rejection of the teaching authority of encyclical letters. Father Duffy, Smith's ghost-writer, wanted to take refuge in the Catholic Encyclopedia, ignoring, however, these plain words that had been written by Pope Pius XI just three years, five months before his response to Charles Marshall was published in Atlantic Monthly:

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Yes, Governor Smith and Father Duffy, the social encyclical letters are quite binding, the Catholic Encyclopedia to the contrary notwithstanding. Pope Pius XII reiterated this matter long about Al Smith and Father Francis Duffy had died:

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.) 

Father Duffy was a good and brave priest who cared deeply about the salvation of souls. Having been raised in an environment of Americanism, however, he sought to reconcile semi-Pelagian principles of self-redemption, which he did see as such, obviously, relying upon the hideous Americanists, John Ireland and James Gibbons to do so. Although Father Duffy contended in the open letter he ghostwrote for Al Smith that the necessity of a Catholic state applied only to purely Catholic states, entities that, for the most part, did not exist by that time because of the adversary's centuries-long revolt against Christendom begun in the Renaissance before makings its open assault during the Protestant Revolt and with the rise of Judeo-Masonry and all other related, naturalist, anti-Incarnational "philosophical" and "revolutionary" movements, Pope Leo XIII had indeed, as Charles Marshall noted, specifically addressed the situation of Chuch-State relations in the United States of America in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895:

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani,January 6, 1895.) 

Pope Leo XIII was exhorting the Catholic bishops of the United States of America to work for the Catholicization of their country, something that most of them did not consider desirable or even necessary, thus setting the stage so very well for the rise of the likes of Angelo Roncalli and Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonia Maria Montini and Albino Luciani and Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, each of whom has believed in the very separation of Church and State endorsed by Alfred Smith and Father Francis Duffy that had been condemned as a "thesis absolutely false" by Pope Saint Pius X.

Meaning no disrespect to the late, courageous Father Duffy, the principle of non-contradiction teaches us that either he was correct or that Pope Saint Pius X, who placed no qualifications or modifications on the use of the words "absolutely false," correct. Just as Richard Cardinal Cushing, the Archbishop of Boston from 1944 to 1970 who once boasted before he died that he had never made a convert in his entire life, served as the enabler of the career of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, so did Father Francis Duffy served as enabler of the career of Governor Alfred E. Smith, Jr., and for the cause of the condemned Americanist heresy that helped to spawn some of the very underpinnings of conciliarism itself.

Father Duffy also set up some straw men in the letter he ghostwrote for Governor Al Smith. The Catholic Church has never preached an intolerance for persons. She has indeed preached an intolerance for error and for the nonexistent "rights" of error, understanding that God has revealed the totality of His Divine Revelation solely to the Catholic Church so that men can see themselves and the world clearly through the eyes of the one and only true Faith and thus be better able to cooperate with the graces for them by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that flow into human souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. Intolerance of error does not apply solely to the "internal" doctrine of the Catholic Church, as the ghostwritten Smith article contends. Oh, no, it applies at all times in all places, admitting that the practical reality of a given situation may require some degree of tolerance but only insofar as is necessary to avoid doing violence to individual conscience, never conceding anything at all to the "rights" of error, as both Pope Gregory XVI and Leo XIII made clear (see Appendix A below).

Perhaps most importantly, Pope Leo XIII made it clear that Catholics are to be one mind and one heart in all matters of Faith and Morals. Catholics are not free to “disagree” with each other:

Agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect concord amongst men, from which concurrence of wills and similarity of action are the natural results. Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful - "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. iv., 5). That is, as there is one Lord and one baptism, so should all Christians, without exception, have but one faith. And so the Apostle St. Paul not merely begs, but entreats and implores Christians to be all of the same mind, and to avoid difference of opinions: "I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms amongst you, and that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment" (I Cor. i., 10). Such passages certainly need no interpreter; they speak clearly enough for themselves. Besides, all who profess Christianity allow that there can be but one faith. It is of the greatest importance and indeed of absolute necessity, as to which many are deceived, that the nature and character of this unity should be recognized. And, as We have already stated, this is not to be ascertained by conjecture, but by the certain knowledge of what was done; that is by seeking for and ascertaining what kind of unity in faith has been commanded by Jesus Christ. (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

We live in a country, the United States of America, that is the direct and immediate result of the disagreement and division of minds wrought by the Protestant Revolt and its wretched, diabolical aftermath that has created a world where most people live their entire lives steeped in one naturalist error after another. Writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, Pope Leo XIII discussed the confusion wrought by the Protestant Revolt and how it give rise to confusion in philosophical circles that helped to popularize naturalism as the logical replacement for Protestantism's heretical views of Christianity:

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 confusion that exists in the minds of most men in the world at this time has, of course, been exacerbated by the apostasies of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which has made its "reconciliation" with the naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian (the belief that human beings can more or less "save themselves" by "stirring up" graces in their own immortal souls) principles of Modernity. Long before conciliarism came to light at the "Second" Vatican Council, however, even the minds of many, if not most, Catholics were deformed as a result of living in a world of pluralism and unfettered "free speech" and "freedom of the press" and "freedom of religion," resulting in most of them accepting the premises of naturalism most uncritically as both natural and normal and as perfectly compatible with the truths of the Catholic Faith.

Alfred Emanuel Smith was only the table-setter for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who said the following before the members of the Houston Ministerial Association in Houston, Texas, on September 12, 1960:

I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition--to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress--on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)--instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.

I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts--why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as Ireland and France--and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and De Gaulle.

But let me stress again that these are my views--for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters--and the church does not speak for me. (Address of Senator John F. Kennedy to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.)

Remember the part that I have highlighted for you as the then Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Judiciary, the late Arlen Specter (D-R-D, Pennsylvania), quoted from it when he questioned then United States Circuit Court of Appeals Judge for the District of Columbia John Glover Roberts upon the latter’s confirmation hearing to succeed the recently deceased William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice of the United States of America in 2005.

Yes, the process of confirming nominees of the Catholic Faith to serve on the Federal judiciary in this country involves perforce a denial of Christ the King before men, which is exactly as the adversary has planned as the logical outcome of the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity.

Americanism is alive and well, and it has helped to make most Catholics in this country cheerleaders for principles condemned by the Catholic Church and that have spread so much evil under the cover of the law.

Acknowledging Accomplishments, Examining Flawed Premises             

As I noted in the last installment of the ongoing “Sober Up” series, my well-founded criticisms of President Donald John Trump, especially as it concerns his ignorance of the governing process and his unpreparedness to make sure that he had confirmable nominees to staff the sub-Cabinet level positions within the Federal bureaucracy, are not made without a due recognition of the undeniable fact that, at least for the most part, the president is staffing the Federal judiciary with worthy appointees.

This having been acknowledged as a matter of simple justice, however, it is nevertheless true that the false premises of the American founding, which will be celebrated with all manner of idolatry on July 4, 2018, are responsible for bringing us to the point that inarguable truths that exist in the very nature of things and do not depend upon human acceptance for their binding force and validity are argued every day in the Federal court system.

Many of the cases that originate at the Federal district court level and then work their way up to the respective Federal circuit courts of appeals and, if certiorari is granted in those cases that present a significant constitutional question, to the Supreme Court of the United States of America involve issues of fundamental moral right and wrong that are beyond the ability of mere humans to “decide.” Contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave until the Second Coming of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the Last Day as He judges the living and the dead do not have any “say” over moral truth.

For example, even though the case of National Institute for Family Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Xavier Becerra, Monday, June 26, 2018, is being viewed as a resounding victory for the work of crisis pregnancy centers that have long been the targets of ambitious state attorneys general, especially in my own native State of New York (Robert Abrams in the 1990s, the disgraced Elliot Spitzer in the early 2000s, the equally disgraced Eric Schneiderman in 2010s), precisely because they have been successful in convincing women who live in low-income areas not to kill their children, the Court’s decision is premised upon the false principle that truth is best determined in the “marketplace of ideas,” a goal that was thwarted in this instance by the People’s Republic of California’s Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) legislation.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who will become the Court’s senior associate justice once the resignation of Anthony McLeod Kennedy takes effect on June 30, 2018, explained his belief in the “competition of ideas” as follows in the decision of the Court that he authored:

Further, when the government polices the content of professional speech, it can fail to “‘preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail.’” McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2014) (slip op., at 8–9). Professionals might have a host of good faith disagreements, both with each other and with the government, on many topics in their respective fields. Doctors and nurses might disagree about the ethics of assisted suicide or the benefits of medical marijuana; lawyers and marriage counselors might disagree about the prudence of prenuptial agreements or the wisdom of divorce; bankers and accountants might disagree about the amount of money that should be devoted to savings or the benefits of tax reform. “[T]he best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” Abrams v. United States, 250 U. S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting), and the people lose when the government is the one deciding which ideas should prevail. (National Institute for Family Life v. Xavier Becerra.)

Unlike the matters of medical marijuana and the amount of money to be saved from tax reform legislation, matters of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, which are certainly matters upon which men of good will may disagree, the civil state has no authority to permit, no less favor, the direct, intentional killing of innocent preborn children nor does it have any authority over the indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage. Clarence Thomas’s concessions in this regard are fatally flawed, even more so when one considers the fact that there is no guarantee at all that truth will prevail in the “marketplace of ideas.”

Pope Pius IX explained this very clearly in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864:

"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."

"And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?" (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

No, there is no guarantee that truth will always prevail in Modernity’s “marketplace of ideas” any more than there was when Truth Himself stood on Pontius Pilate’s porch and was rejected by the mob, inspired by bribes and the effects of our own sins having transcended time, as they cried out “Barabbas! Barabbas!”

While it is good that crisis pregnancy centers will face a bit of relief now from the menacing power of the civil state, the fact that there has to be such centers in the first place is a sign of how far men and their nations have fallen in the five hundred years since Martin Luther’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the subsequent rise of the Judeo-Masonic anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity. Such centers, which do so much good on the frontlines of trying to save innocent lives and to help the souls of their mothers, exist precisely because the truth of the inviolability of human life has not prevailed in the post-Catholic world of Modernity, a fact that is traceable back to October 31, 1517, when Father Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Pluralism breeds the proliferation of unchecked errors that are disastrous for the temporal and eternal welfare of souls and thus for a rightly-ordered society.

Additionally, even though Justice Thomas’s majority opinion in the case of National Institute for Family Life Advocates v. Xavier Becerra found that the People’s Republic of California (PRC) was attempting to coerce operators of crisis pregnancy centers to violate their consciences by mandating them to notify women where they could have their babies surgically executed, he did leave open the possibility that PRC might be able to remedy the situation in its favor at some later point:

The application of the unlicensed notice to advertisements demonstrates just how burdensome it is. The notice applies to all “print and digital advertising materials” by an unlicensed covered facility. §123472(b). These materials must include a government-drafted statement that “[t]his facility is not licensed as a medical facility by the State of California and has no licensed medical provider who provides or directly supervises the provision of services.” §123472(b)(1). An unlicensed facility must call attention to the notice, instead of its own message, by some method such as larger text or contrasting type or color. See §§123472(b)(2)–(3). This scripted language must be posted in English and as many other languages as California chooses to require. As California conceded at oral argument, a billboard for an unlicensed facility that says “Choose Life” would have to surround that two-word statement with a 29-word statement from the government, in as many as 13 different languages. In this way, the unlicensed notice drowns out the facility’s own message. More likely, the “detail required” by the unlicensed notice “effectively rules out” the possibility of having such a billboard in the first place. Ibanez, supra, at 146. 20 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FAMILY AND LIFE ADVOCATES v. BECERRA Opinion of the Court For all these reasons, the unlicensed notice does not satisfy Zauderer, assuming that standard applies. California has offered no justification that the notice plausibly furthers. It targets speakers, not speech, and imposes an unduly burdensome disclosure requirement that will chill their protected speech. Taking all these circumstances together, we conclude that the unlicensed notice is unjustified and unduly burdensome under Zauderer. We express no view on the legality of a similar disclosure requirement that is better supported or less burdensome. (National Institute for Family Life v. Xavier Becerra.)

In other words, this battle will be fought again in the future, perhaps with similar results, but it will be fought again. One can be assured that the PRC (People's Republic of California) is not going to give up the battle without trying to continue to put crisis pregnancy centers out of business once and for all.

Now, this having been noted, I am not all unhappy with the results of this nor am I discounting the importance of the appointment of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch on the Court’s 2017-2018 term, which has now concluded. Of course not. I am, though, trying to point out that, despite the results in three major cases decided by the Court this week (NIFLA v. Becerra, Janus v. American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees Union, June 27, 2018, and Trump v. Hawaii, June 26, 2018), constitutional interpretation in a pluralistic nation always hangs by the slender thread of a competing set of legal positivists (those believe in a “living constitution” and those who believe in an “originalist” constitutional interpretation), each of which excludes the use of the Natural Law, to say nothing of God’s Commandments, in their judicial decision-making.

As I have noted on numerous other occasions on this site, the deification of the Constitution of the United States of America by “originalists” as the sole source of the legitimacy of human actions must result in a constant effort to “discover” its “true meaning” is exactly what Protestants attempt to do with Sacred Scripture. There is no reason that the “sacred words” of the Constitution should carry an “exact,” immutable meaning when the truly sacred words of Holy Writ are interpreted in different ways at different times by succeeding generations of Protestants. Even Constitutional “originalists” can disagree with each other about the “true meaning” of the Constitution when applied to the “changing” circumstances of “modern” times just as much as do Protestants who are Scriptural “literalists.” This is what must happen when law and human action have no higher authority than the words written by dead Masons, who believed that they were on the cutting edge of creating a world that had rejected the “monkish superstition” of the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

Ironically, the deification of the Constitution by “originalists” (those who believe in a “strict interpretation) led in due course to a reaction by those seeking to use the Constitution as fungible justification for the supposed “evolution” of society in ways that could not have been foreseen by the dead Masons who wrote the document. Thus was born what the late, pro-abortion Catholic Associate Justice William Brennan (an appointee of President Dwight David Eisenhower) called “the living constitution,” which provided social engineers and moral relativists with the chance to make of the Constitution’s words whatever they desired. This, of course, is the same thing that liberal Protestants and Modernist Catholics do with Sacred Scripture by the use of the “historical-critical” method of exegesis and the condemned Modernist precept of dogmatic evolutionism.

While it is true that the words of the Constitution of the United States of America have a plain and exacting meaning in the delineation of the powers of each branch of the Federal government and the division of powers between the Federal government and state governments, those words, which were written by mere men, the aforementioned dead Masons, are not the arbiters of moral truth. Nations founded on the belief that it is possible to establish and maintain a well-ordered society absent a due recognition of the teaching authority of the Catholic Church will find themselves in endless disputes about matters that are beyond the ability of mere mortals to decide as courts expand the limits of indecency and lawlessness without regard to the good of souls, upon which the whole of social order depends.

Pope Leo XIII explained in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890, that Catholics have a solemn duty to oppose laws that are repugnant to the eternal law of God and to the good of souls as such laws are illicit on their very face:

But, if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense leveled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of sedition; for the obedience due to rulers and legislators is not refused, but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor due to God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws. You are fully aware, venerable brothers, that this is the very contention of the Apostle St. Paul, who, in writing to Titus, after reminding Christians that they are “to be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word,” at once adds: “And to be ready to every good work.” Thereby he openly declares that, if laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them. In like manner, the Prince of the Apostles gave this courageous and sublime answer to those who would have deprived him of the liberty of preaching the Gospel: “If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

Pope Leo XIII also explained that the descent of men into lawlessness is the natural result of nations founded in secular principles:

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.)

The Supreme Court is not the arbiter of moral truth. God is a majority of one, and He has given sole authority to the Catholic Church to teach infallibly about Divine Revelation and to be the authoritative interpreter of the Natura Law:

The Church does not say that morality belongs purely, in the sense of exclusively, to her; but that it belongs wholly to her. She has never maintained that outside her fold and apart from her teaching, man cannot arrive at any moral truth; she has on the contrary more than once condemned this opinion because it has appeared under more forms than one. She does however say, has said, and will ever say, that because of her institution by Jesus Christ, because of the Holy Ghost sent her in His name by the Father, she alone possesses what she has had immediately from God and can never lose, the whole of moral truth, omnem veritatem, in which all individual moral truths are included, as well those which man may learn by the help of reason, as those which form part of revelation or which may be deduced from it. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.) 

Although court decisions dealing with matters of mora truth are in opposition to the Natural Law, which is certainly true, what does this mean in a pluralistic society whose Federal and state constitutions recognize nothing above the words of written documents (if that!) and/or the dictates of popular sovereignty as the standards of determining the "constitutionality" of various efforts to defy the Natural Law?

Sure, right reason and an understanding of the simple facts of biology can lead a right-thinking human being into opposing the surgical slaughter of innocent human beings and, of course, perverse actions against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, whether or not those who engage in such actions are seeking to have them "legitimized" by "marriage" licenses issued by the civil state.

What does right reason in accord with the Natural Law mean to those who are relativists and positivists?

Nothing?

"Who are you to tell me what to believe? You have your 'truth.' I have my 'truth.' No one is going to tell me what to believe or how to act."

The Natural Law means nothing in a world where relativism and positivism prevail as a direct result of the overthrow of the authority of its ultimate guardian and infallible explicator's role of teaching men about its precepts and disciplining civil rulers judiciously in grave matters only as a last resort following the discharge of her Indirect Powers, enumerated above. The modern pluralistic state is thus at the mercy of a majority of whoever happens to serve in the institutions of civil governance (executive, legislative, judicial) and/or whichever "opinion" happens to constitute a majority at any given time, as mentioned earlier. There is no logical or consistent way to retard social evils in a land which refuses to recognize the authority of the Catholic Church in her exercise of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

So Long, Anthony McLeod Kennedy

This is by way of reminding the twelve remaining readers (if that are that many, that is) of this website that the resignation of the egregious pro-abortion, pro-perversity Catholic, Anthony McLeod Kenney, as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, does not necessarily mean that, for example, the Court’s decision in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, Monday, January 22, 1973, will be overturned if, despite President Donald John Trump’s recent statement that he had no “litmus test” about decriminalized baby-slaughter to use in selecting Kennedy’s replacement, a naturalist jurist of the “originalist” bent is nominated by the president and is confirmed by the United States Senate.

Why is this so?

Well, I am glad that you, my most inquisitive twelve readers, have presented me with this interrogatory.

This is so because Opus Dei's own John Glover Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, has shown that he has a greater regard for the Court’s wrongly-decided legal precedents and for the political realities of the day than he does for the constitutionality of legislative enactments or for any concept of moral truth that exists beyond the “will of the people” to manipulate.

Roberts said in his opening statement before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary during his confirmation hearings to succeed the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist:

Mr. Chairman, I come before the Committee with no agenda. I have no platform. Judges are not politicians who can promise to do certain things in exchange for votes. I have no agenda, but I do have a commitment. If I am confirmed, I will confront every case with an open mind. I will fully and fairly analyze the legal arguments that are presented. I will be open to the considered views of my colleagues on the bench, and I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability, and I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat. (Roberts Confirmation Hearing.)

A Catholic is not to have any kind of “open mind” about moral right and wrong. Well, I will correct myself: no believing Catholic has such an “open mind.” John Glover Roberts is a Catholic after the apostate mind and heart of an Argentinian heretic named Jorge Mario Bergoglio:

Here is what the then Judge Roberts said in specific terms about Roe v. Wade during his confirmation hearings before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, then chaired by the pro-abortion, pro-perversity, anti-Catholic thirty-third degree Freemason named Arlen Specter (D-R-D, Pennsylvania), who asked Roberts whether he considered Roe v. Wade as “settled law”:

Chairman SPECTER. When you and I met on our first so-called courtesy call, I discussed with you the concept of a super-stare decisis. And this was a phrase used by Circuit Judge Luttig in Richmond Medical Center v. Governor Gilmore in the year 2000, when he refers to Casey being a super-stare decisis decision with respect to the fundamental right to choose, and a number of the academics—Professor Farber has talked about super-stare decisis, and Professor Estrich has, as it applies to statutory lines. Do you think that the cases which have followed Roe fall into the category of a super-stare decisis designation?

Judge ROBERTS. Well, it’s a term that hasn’t found its way into the Supreme Court opinions yet. I think—

Chairman SPECTER. Well, there is an opportunity for that. [Laughter.]

Judge ROBERTS. I think one way to look at it is that the Casey decision itself, which applied the principles of stare decisis to Roe v. Wade, is itself a precedent of the Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. And that would be the body of law that any judge confronting an issue in his care would begin with, not simply the decision in Roe v. Wade but its reaffirmation in the Casey decision. That is itself a precedent. It’s a precedent on whether or not to revisit the Roe v. Wade precedent. And under principles of stare decisis, that would be where any judge considering the issue in this area would begin.

Chairman SPECTER. When you and I talked informally, I asked you if you had any thought as to how many opportunities there were in the intervening 32 years for Roe to be overruled, and you said you did not really know, and you cited a number. And I said, ‘‘Would it surprise you to know that there have been 38 occasions where Roe has been taken up, not with a specific issue raised but all with an opportunity for Roe to be overruled?’’ One of them was Rust v. Sullivan, where you participated in the writing of the brief, and although the case did not squarely raise the overruling of Roe, it involved the issue of whether Planned Parenthood units funded with Federal money could counsel on abortion. And in that brief, you again raised the question about Roe being wrongly decided, and then I pointed out to you that there had been some 38 cases where the Court had taken up Roe. I am very seldom a user of charts, but on this one I prepared a chart because it speaks—a little too heavy to lift, but it speaks louder than just—thank you, Senator Grassley. Thirty-eight cases where Roe has been taken up, and I don’t want to coin any phrases on super precedents. We will leave that to the Supreme Court. But would you think that Roe might be a super-duper precedent in light— [Laughter.]

Chairman SPECTER.—of 38 occasions to overrule it?

Judge ROBERTS. The interesting thing, of course, is not simply the opportunity to address it, but when the Court actually considers the question. And that, of course, is in the Casey decision where it did apply the principles of stare decisis and specifically addressed it. And that I think is the decision that any judge in this area would begin with.

Chairman SPECTER. Judge Roberts, in your confirmation hearing for circuit court, your testimony read to this effect, and it has been widely quoted: ‘‘Roe is the settled law of the land.’’ Do you mean settled for you, settled only for your capacity as a circuit judge, or settled beyond that?

Judge ROBERTS. Well, beyond that, it’s settled as a precedent of the Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. And those principles, applied in the Casey case, explain when cases should be revisited and when they should not. And it is settled as a precedent of the Court, yes.

Chairman SPECTER. You went on then to say, ‘‘It’s a little more than settled. It was reaffirmed in the face of a challenge that it should be overruled in the Casey decision.’’ So it has that added precedential value.

Judge ROBERTS. I think the initial question the judge confronting an issue in this area, you don’t go straight to the Roe decision; you begin with Casey, which modified the Roe framework and reaffirmed its central holding.

Chairman SPECTER. And you went on to say, ‘‘Accordingly, it is the settled law of the land,’’ using the term ‘‘settled’’ again. Then your final statement as to this quotation, ‘‘There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying the precedent as well as Casey.’’ There had been a question raised about your personal views, and let me digress from Roe for just a moment because I think this touches on an issue which ought to be settled. When you talk about your personal views, and as they may relate to your own faith, would you say that your views are the same as those expressed by John Kennedy when he was a candidate and he spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of 1960, ‘‘I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me’’?

Judge ROBERTS. I agree with that, Senator, yes.

Chairman SPECTER. And did you have that in mind when you said, ‘‘There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying the precedent as well as Casey’’?

Judge ROBERTS. Well, I think people’s personal views on this issue derive from a number of sources, and there’s nothing in my personal views based on faith or other sources that would prevent me from applying the precedents of the Court faithfully under principles of stare decisis. (Roberts Confirmation Hearing.)

Although there are very few people left as readers of this site—and fewer each month are those who support it financially (!), let me reiterate the fact that the influence of then United States Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s statement, quoted by Arlen Specter thirteen years ago, on succeeding generations of Catholics in public life, which is contradiction to a Catholic’s baptismal obligations that were summarized by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

John Glover Roberts has a great respect of legal precedent that has no standing in the eyes of God, and it must be remembered as well that he has little regard for the Constitution itself when it means that an unconstitutional “goody” created by Congress would be overturned. This is what did when Roberts deliberately rewrote the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in order to uphold its nonexistent constitutionality because he wanted to show “deference” to then President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro’s only legislative “achievement” in his first term, which is why he shifted his vote against the act’s constitutionality and then wrote the Court’s opinion in the case of National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. and Department of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Florida, et al., June 28, 2012, that was so full of tortured reasoning and fallacies that even the “moderate” (no one who supports baby-killing or perversity under the cover of law, is a “moderate”) Anthony McLeod Kennedy found without any constitutional or legal merit:

The Court today decides to save a statute Congress did not write. It rules that what the statute declares to be a requirement with a penalty is instead an option subject to a tax. And it changes the intentionally coercive sanction of a total cut-off of Medicaid funds to a supposedly noncoercive cut-off of only the incremental funds that the Act makes available.

The Court regards its strained statutory interpretationas judicial modesty. It is not. It amounts instead to a vast judicial overreaching. It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of health-care regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect. It makes enactment of sensible health-care regulation more difficult, since Congress cannot start afresh but must take as its point of departure a jumble of now senseless provisions, provisions that certain interests favored under the Court’s new design will struggle to retain. And it leaves the public and the States to expend vast sums of money on requirements that may or may not survive the necessary congressional revision. 

The Court’s disposition, invented and atextual as it is,does not even have the merit of avoiding constitutional difficulties. It creates them. The holding that the Individual Mandate is a tax raises a difficult constitutional question (what is a direct tax?) that the Court resolves with inadequate deliberation. And the judgment on the Medicaid Expansion issue ushers in new federalism concerns and places an unaccustomed strain upon the Union. Those States that decline the Medicaid Expansion must subsidize, by the federal tax dollars taken from their citizens, vast grants to the States that accept the Medicaid Expansion. If that destabilizing political dynamic, so antagonistic to a harmonious Union, is to be introduced at all, it should be by Congress, not by the Judiciary.

The values that should have determined our course today are caution, minimalism, and the understanding that the Federal Government is one of limited powers. But the Court’s ruling undermines those values at every turn. In the name of restraint, it overreaches. In the name of constitutional avoidance, it creates new constitutional questions. In the name of cooperative federalism, it undermines state sovereignty.

The Constitution, though it dates from the founding of the Republic, has powerful meaning and vital relevance to our own times. The constitutional protections that this case involves are protections of structure. Structural protections—notably, the restraints imposed by federalism and separation of powers—are less romantic and have less obvious a connection to personal freedom than the provisions of the Bill of Rights or the Civil War Amendments. Hence they tend to be undervalued or even forgotten by our citizens. It should be the responsibility of the Court tote a ch otherwise, to remind our people that the Framers considered structural protections of freedom the most important ones, for which reason they alone were embodied in the original Constitution and not left to later amendment. The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today’s decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it.
For the reasons here stated, we would find the Act invalid in its entirety. We respectfully dissent. (Minority Opinion, at pages 64-65 of opinion, page 190-191 of the full .pdf.)

John Glover Roberts is fully capable of twisting himself into a constitutional pretzel to “uphold” Roe v. Wade. Those who are concerned about “results” rather than even any kind of the truth on the natural level wind up making up their rationalizations on a case-by-case basis without any regard for consistency. This is all made possible by triumph of positivism (the belief that something is so because it has been asserted as such), one of the many consequences of Martin Luther’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Indeed, the retiring Anthony McLeod Kennedy twisted himself into a constitutional pretzel just three years after the National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. and Department of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Florida, et al., to vote with Roberts in the case of King v. Burwell, June 25, 2015, the Feast of Saint William the Abbot, because so many people had become dependent upon ObamaCare “insurance exchanges,” which were then under challenge.

Sure, the three associate justices who dissented in the combined cases of King v. Burwell were appointed by Republicans (Antonin Scalia was a Reagan appointee, Clarence Thomas was appointed by Bush the elder, who also gave us the completely pro-death David Souter, and Samuel Alito was appointed by Bush the Lesser). With constitutional interpretation hanging on the slender threads of the whims of the legal positivists who sit on the Supreme Court, though, it was nevertheless an interesting commentary that the two decisive votes in the combined cases of King v. Burwell came from Republican appointees, one of whom, Roberts, continued to dissemble about the actual text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Action, and Kennedy, who was concerned about the fate of those who would lose their health insurance coverage if the court held itself bound to the actual words of the legislation as written.

This leads us to the oft-made argument that President Ronald Wilson Reagan did not “know” that Judge Anthony McLeod Kennedy, who wrote the court’s opinion in the case Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, the Feast of Saints John and Paul, was pro-death, something that is completely delusional and/or a rewriting of actual history:

To wit, here are Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s own words in his confirmation testimony before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

The CHAIRMAN. And this may save some time, because I had a whole round of questions on this. Let me put it to you very bluntly. Do you think Griswold was reasoned properly? 

Judge KENNEDY. I really think I would like to draw the line and not talk about the Griswold case so far as its reasoning or its result. I would say that if you were going to propose a statute or a hypothetical that infringed upon the core values of privacy that the Constitution protects, you would be hard put to find a stronger case than Griswold.   

The CHAIRMAN. That doesn't answer the question. Is there a marital right to privacy protected by the Constitution?   

Judge KENNEDY. Yes—pardon, is there a   

The CHAIRMAN. Marital right to privacy. 

Judge KENNEDY. Marital right to privacy; that is what I thought you said. Yes, sir.   

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. (Questioning of Judge Anthony Kennedy by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., December 15, 1987)  

The then Judge Anthony Kennedy had been asked by Senator Biden the day before about a conversation he had had with United States Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina, now deceased), who drew the inference that Kennedy's calling himself a "practicing Catholic" and that he, Kennedy, "admired" Helm's pro-life position was an indication that Kennedy would use his religious beliefs as a foundation of judicial decision-making. This concerned the pro-abortion Catholic, Biden, who had just helped to torpedo the nomination of another "strict constructionist" positivist, Judge Robert Bork:

Judge KENNEDY: Now it would be highly improper for a judge to allow his, or her, own personal or religious views to enter into a decision respecting a constitutional matter. There are many books that I will not read, that I do not let, or these days do not recommend, my children read. That does not prohibit me from enforcing the first amendment because those books are protected by the first amendment. A man's, or a woman's, relation to his, or her, God, and the fact that he, or she, may think they are held accountable to a higher power, may be important evidence of a person's character and temperament. It is irrelevant to his, or her, judicial authority. When we decide cases we put such matters aside, and as—I think it was—Daniel Webster said, "Submit to the judgment of the nation as a whole." 

The CHAIRMAN. SO Judge, when you said—if it is correct—to Senator Helms: "Indeed I do, and I admire it, I am a practicing Catholic," you were not taking, at that point a position on the constitutional question that has been and continues to be before the Court?  

Judge KENNEDY. TO begin with, that was not the statement.   

The CHAIRMAN. Will you tell us what   

Judge KENNEDY. We had a wide-ranging discussion and those two matters were not linked.  

The CHAIRMAN. Those two matters were not linked. So the article is incorrect? 

Judge KENNEDY. In my view, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That is fine. I thank you. My time is up. (Questioning of Judge Anthony Kennedy by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.)  

Anyone who believes in the delusion that the heresy of Americanism was "phantom" in nature, that is, that it never existed, ought to re-read Anthony Kennedy's testimony before the now Vice President of the United States of America, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., on December 14 and 15, 1987. Kennedy's answers reek of Americanism and Americanism's acceptance of legal positivism of one form or another as the foundation of law and jurisprudence.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy distinguished himself as a supporter of the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn long before he ruled in such cases as United States v. Windsor, June 26, 2013, the Feast of Saints John and Paul, and Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, two years to the day after the Windsor case. This is what Kennedy, joined by the President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s first Supreme Court nominee, Sandra Day O’Connor and by President George Herbert Walker Bush’s first Court nominee, David Souter, wrote in the case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v William Casey, June 29, 1992:

Although Roe has engendered opposition, it has in no sense proven unworkable, representing as it does a simple limitation beyond which a state law is unenforceable. P. 835.

(e) The Roe rule's limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed. Pp. 855-856. (Text of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.)

Here one can see how contraception, which was pushed a century ago by the likes of Margaret Sanger (see Planned Barrenhood: Evil From Its Very Inceptions) and received “theological” justification from the Anglican sect in 1930 and from the “Federal Council of Churches” in the United States of America in 1931, altered the nature of family life, modeled as it should be after the Holy Family of Nazareth, that it became an accepted fact of life in the Twentieth Century that it is both natural and commendable for married women to leave the domestic hearth to fulfill their career goals, if not eschew marriage altogether in the achievement of worldly success and power as they conduct. Such women have no time for children, which is why the surgical execution of children, Kennedy reasoned, must be available because there are times when the best laid plans of wives and fornicating women to thwart the natural end of conjugal relations “aft gang agley” (“oft go astray”).

Mind you, I am not disparaging women who have had to use their education and talents to help support their families. No, I am only noting the fact that the “world” has disparaged the self-sacrificing mother who stays-at-home to raise her children to be canonizable saints.

As noted before, however, Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s departure from the Supreme Court of the United States of America does not necessarily spell the death-knell for the daily death-dealing in abortuaries and other “health-care” facilities even though the members of the organized crime family of the naturalist “left” will raise millions upon millions of dollars by agitating their base over that possibility. This is what they have been doing since then United States Circuit Court of Appeals Judge for the District of Columbia Robert H. Bork was nominated by President Ronald Wilson Reagan to succeed Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist upon his elevation to succeed the pro-abortion Lewis Powell, who was appointed by President Richard Milhous Nixon in 1971, as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

Edward Moore Kennedy browbeat United States Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Judge Robert Bork just forty-five minutes after then President Ronald Wilson Reagan nominated him on July 1, 1987, to succeed during his confirmation hearings in 1987 before the Senate Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate to succeed retiring Supreme Court of the United States Associate Justice Lewis Powell, with these demagogic words:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens. (Kennedy And Bork.)

Bork’s confirmation, of course, was rejected by the United States Senate, then in the control of the organized crime family of the naturalist “left,” by a vote 52-48 on October 23, 1987, whereupon Reagan, who did not lobby Republican senators to vote to confirm Bork after the vicious attacks by the then Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senator Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (D-Delaware) and, of course, the Chappaquiddick Kid himself, United States Senator Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Taxachussetts), nominated United States Circuit Court of Appeals Judge for the District of Columbia Douglas Ginsburg as Powell’s replacement. Ginsburg, though, had to withdraw because of use of marijuana a law professor at Harvard University, after which President Reagan turned to Anthony McLeod Kennedy.

It has been standard practice for Republican presidents since then to go out of the way to say that they used no “litmus test” on abortion in their nomination of appointees to the Federal judiciary, especially to the Supreme Court. The two Democratic Presidents since that time, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and the mastermind of the ongoing coup against the man whose financial empire has been bankrolled by Talmudic mobsters, President Donald John Trump, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro did have such a “litmus test,” and they were absolutely unapologetic in their use of it to appoint pro-aborts to the Supreme Court (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Merrill Garland, whose nomination was blocked by United States Senator Addison Mitchell McConnell, R-Kentucky) and to the United States District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeals.

The smarmy camera-hog named Charles E. Schumer, the Minority Leader of the United States Senate, has, of course, reaffirmed the importance of the Democrats’ pro-abort, pro-perversity, pro-statism litmus test in the wake of Associate Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s retirement:

In his speech Wednesday, Schumer asked whether Trump and Republicans will nominate someone who will "preserve protections for people with preexisting [health] conditions" or a justice who will "put health insurance companies over patients and... the federal government between a woman and her doctor."

"The Senate should reject on a bipartisan basis any justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade," he said, adding that the justice should not come from Trump's previous list of 25 potential justices the president compiled with the help of the Federalist Society during the search for late Justice Antonin Scalia's replacement. (Charlles Schumer Mugs for the Pro-Death Base Again.)

It is quite a statement about the naturalist farce that passes for governance and politics in the United States of America that the pro-death forces of the naturalist “left” are more consistent, more courageous and most outspoken in their support of evil than are their false opposites in the naturalist “right” in opposing it.

Indeed, one need only remember that opposition to the surgical execution did not matter to President Ronald Wilson Reagan when he nominated Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to replace the pro-abortion Associate Justice Potter Stewart in 1981, and it did not matter to President George Herbert Walker Bush when he nominated Judge David Souter to replace the pro-abortion Catholic William Brennan in 1990. It is thus nothing other than maddening to hear the “George Herbert Walker Bush did not about David H. Souter” line that is being repeated once again after Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s retirement notice four days ago.

The myth that “Reagan did not know about Sandra Day O’Connor” and that “Bush 41 did not know about David H. Souter” was exploded contemporaneously by the late Howard Phillips, the founder and longtime chairman of the Conservative Caucus Foundation, in testimony he gave testimony before the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate against both the O'Connor and Souter nominations, as he explained in an interview. Although I disagreed with the late Mr. Phillips's support for the philosophy of the founders of the United States of America and his Calvinist view of the world, his work exposing the fraudulent nature of various "pro-life" Republican administrations was admirable and stands the test of time on its well-documented merits:

Let me put this into context. People say you can't tell how a Supreme Court nominee will turn out once on the bench. I respectfully disagree. In most cases, it'' very clear. I opposed the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor because it was very clear that she had a pro-abortion record in the Arizona state senate and as a judge in Arizona. She was also allied with Planned Parenthood. I opposed David Souter because I read his senior thesis at Harvard in which he said he was a legal positivist and one of his heroes was Oliver Wendell Holmes and that he rejected all higher law theories, such as those spelled out in our Declaration of Independence. In addition, he was a trustee of two hospitals: Dartmouth Hitchcock and Concord Memorial. He successfully changed the policy of those two hospitals from 'zero abortion' to 'convenience abortion.' I testified against Ruth Bader Ginsburg because her record was clear. She saw the Supreme Court as a Supreme Legislature. She was on the far Left of virtually every issue. Yet, only three members of the U.S. Senate voted in opposition to her confirmation. Only eight voted in opposition to Breyer. With respect to Judge Roberts, I'm in the midst of an extensive and intensive study of his record. Several things become clear, although I'm not ready to reach a final conclusion. It is clear that while he claims to have no overarching judicial philosophy he does have a point of view on most of the big issues. But that point of view is overshadowed by his pragmatism and his desire to stay within what is perceived as the mainstream. (Flynn Files - Howard Phillips Interview Part I.) 

Wasn’t that an accurate observation of John Glover Roberts ten years ago now?

Here is a brief excerpt from the late Mr. Phillips's actual testimony against Ronald Wilson Reagan's nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981:

As an Arizona State Senator, she voted twice for abortion on demand through the ninth month of pregnancy; she co-sponsored a proposal to permit abortion without parental consent; she promoted ERA; she opposed the Human Life Amendment; and she failed to oppose abortions at a taxpayer-funded facility." (The Supreme Court Watch - A Public Service of The Conservative Caucus.) 

Judie Brown, the founder and President of the American Life League, similarly testified against Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination in 1981, also documenting O'Connor's solid pro-abortion record as the majority leader of the Arizona State Senate. Anyone who claims that they were "surprised" by O'Connor's opinions, summarized below by a pro-abortion organization, is dealing in a world of fanciful delusions. Howard Phillips and Judie Brown documented Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record openly and publicly. The documentation provided by Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Brown meant nothing to Ronald Wilson Reagan or Attorney General William French Smith or to the "pro-life" Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee or in the rest of the United States Senate.

Here is that summary of the retired Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record a found on a pro-abortion website:

Justice Sandra O'Connor has played a very influential role on the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. In both Planned Parenthood v. Casey andStenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I), O'Connor's single vote in support of a woman's right to choose ensured the survival of Roe v. Wade.

Justice O'Connor, with Justices Kennedy and Souter, wrote the controlling plurality opinion in Casey which upheld a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion in a case many feared would overturn Roe v. Wade:

"After considering the fundamental constitutional questions resolved by Roe, principles of institutional integrity, and the rule of stare decisis, we are led to conclude this: the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed."

"Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code."

While Justice O'Connor's opinions have changed in the way abortion cases are analyzed, lowering the standard of review from strict scrutiny to an undue burden analysis, she has prevented the conservative members of the Supreme Court from destroying the central provisions of Roe.

In Stenberg v.Carhart (Carhart I), the Court's most recent decision concerning abortion rights, Justice O'Connor joined Justice Breyer's majority opinion affirming Roe and Casey:

"...[t]his Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman's right to choose. We shall not revisit those legal principles."

In Hill v. Colorado, Justice O'Connor voted uphold Colorado's law creating a buffer zone around health facilities. Inside the 100-foot buffer zone, a patient cannot be approached within eight feet without consent for the purpose of leafleting, displaying a sign, or engaging in conversation. (National Abortion Federation: O'Connor's Legacy.)

Here is Howard Phillips’s actual testimony against David Souter before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 19, 1990, the Feast of Saint Januarius:

In considering David Souter’s suitability to cast what, in many cases, will be the deciding opinion on the Supreme Court of the United States, it is necessary to go beyond Mr. Souter’s intellectual capacity and his stated opinions, and to assess his character and moral courage in their relationship to the responsibilities of a Supreme Court Justice. 

DAVID SOUTER His pro-abortion record was there for those who wanted to know the truth. One moment of truth for Mr. Souter came in February, 1973 when, as a member of the board of trustees of Concord Hospital, he participated in a unanimous decision that abortions be performed at the hospital. 

Advocacy of, or even acquiescence in, such a decision is morally distinguishable from the judicial conclusion, profoundly incorrect in my view, that women have a constitutional right to destroy their unborn children. 

It is also distinguishable from and far more troubling than the political argument by politicians who maintain that they are “personally opposed” to abortion, even as they advocate its decriminalization. 

It is one thing to intellectually rationalize the case for permitting legal abortions, while still opposing the exercise of such legal authority. It is quite another - something far more invidious, morally - to actually join in a real-world decision to cause abortions to be performed, routinely, at a particular hospital. 

Those abortions whose performance was authorized by David Souter were not mandated by law or court opinion. In fact, laws have remained to this day on the books in New Hampshire which provide criminal penalties for any “attempt to procure miscarriage” or “intent to destroy quick child.” Indeed, section 585:14 of the New Hampshire Criminal Code establishes the charge of second degree murder for the death of a pregnant woman in consequence of an attempted abortion. Nor were those abortions which Mr. Souter authorized performed merely to save the life of the mother, nor were they limited to cases of rape or incest. 

If the unborn child is human, and if innocent human life is to be defended and safeguarded, why did Mr. Souter acquiesce in those abortions? Why did he not speak out against them? Why did he, through twelve years on the Concord Hospital board, in a position of responsibility, help cause those abortions to be performed, and invest his personal reputation in clearly implied approval of those abortions?

The overarching moral issue in the political life of the United States in the last third of the 20th Century is, in my opinion, the question of abortion. Is the unborn child a human person, entitled to the protections pledged to each of us by the Founders of our Nation?
The issue is much more than one of legal or judicial philosophy. There are men and women in the legal profession, in elected office, and on the bench who acknowledge abortion to be morally repugnant, but who assert that, in present circumstances, it cannot be constitutionally prohibited. 

Whatever Mr. Souter’s legal and judicial philosophy may be - and, on the record, it seems to be one which rejects the higher law theories implicit in the Declaration of Independence - it is a chilling fact which the Senate must consider that Judge Souter has personally participated in decisions resulting in the performance of abortions, where such abortions were in no way mandated or required by law or court decision. 

By his own account, Mr. Souter served as a member of the board of trustees for the Concord Hospital from 1971 until 1985. Following service as board secretary, he was president of the board from 1978 to 1984. 

In 1973, shortly after the Supreme Court’s January 22 Roe v. Wade decision, the Concord Hospital trustees voted to initiate a policy of performing abortions at Concord Hospital. 

Similarly, Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, which is associated with the Dartmouth Medical School, of which Judge Souter has been an overseer, has performed abortion up to the end of the second trimester. 

During the period of Mr. Souter’s tenure as a decision-maker of these two institutions, many hundreds of abortions were performed under his authority, with no indication that he ever objected to or protested the performance of these abortions. Even though the Roe v. Wade decision did, in fact, authorize abortions through the ninth month of pregnancy, nothing in the Supreme Court’s decision required or obliged any hospital to conduct abortions, whether in the ninth month, the sixth month, or even in the first month of pregnancy. 

If Judge Souter is confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, he will, in all likelihood, be given the opportunity to address not only the issue of Roe v. Wade, but broader issues involving the sanctity of innocent human life.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the 1986 Thornburgh case, “there is a fundamental and well-recognized difference between a fetus and a human being. Indeed, if there is not such a difference, the permissibility of terminating the life of a fetus could scarcely be left to the will of the State legislatures.” 

Justice Stevens was wrong in a very deadly way. If an unborn child is not human, I would ask Justice Stevens, what is he, what is she? But as least Mr. Stevens was logical in defending his support for the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court said that, “If the personhood of the unborn child is established, the pro-abortion case collapses, for the fetus’s right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the Fourteenth Amendment.” 

As Notre Dame law professor Charles Rice has pointed out, “This is so, because the common law does not permit a person to kill an innocent non-aggressor, even to save his own life.”

Does David Souter believe that the unborn child - the fetus in the mother’s womb - is a human person, deserving of all the protections which are guaranteed to human beings after the moment of birth? 

Seemingly, Mr. Souter’s answer is an unequivocal “no.” by agreeing that abortions be performed at institutions under his authority, Mr. Souter established clearly that he did not recognize the personhood of the unborn child. For surely, if he did acknowledge the unborn child to be a human person, Mr. Souter would not have agreed to authorize the extinguishment of so many precious lives at medical facilities for which he bore responsibility. 

One must conclude that either Mr. Souter accepts the view that the life of the unborn child is of less value than the convenience and profit of those who collaborate in the killing of that child, or that, despite his recognition of the fact that each unborn child is human, a handiwork of God’s creation, he lacked the moral courage or discernment to help prevent the destruction of so many innocent human lives when he had the authority, indeed, the responsibility, to do so. 

Either way, in such circumstances, unless there are mitigating factors or extenuating considerations which have not yet been brought to public attention, it is difficult to regard Mr. Souter as one suitable for participation in judicial decisions at the highest level of our Nation. 

If, during his years of responsibility at Concord Hospital and Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, Mr. Souter believed each fetus to be a human person, and failed to act against the performance of abortion, he was morally delinquent. 

If, on the other hand, he justified himself by denying the human qualities of the unborn child, then he placed himself in the ambit of those who have argued against the very philosophy which his sponsor, President George Bush, purported to embrace during his 1988 presidential campaign. 

On the basis of the information now available, Mr. Souter, in my opinion, should not be confirmed. (Testimony of: HOWARD PHILLIPS Chairman, The Conservative Caucus Foundation.)  

Did this factual presentation matter to any of the "pro-life" senators, including two future Republican presidential nominees, Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., and John Sidney McCain III?

Not one little bit.

To this day, these craven careerists have hidden behind the abject lie that they were "misled" by then President George Herbert Walker Bush's White House Chief of Staff, John Sununu, the former Governor of the State of New Hampshire, about David Souter. This is a lie. An abject lie. Howard Phillips presented incontrovertible evidence about David Souter's support for abortion. This did not matter one little bit to Bob Dole or to John McCain. Not one little bit. The facts were presented. They did not care. Not one little bit.   

Similarly, the late Antonin Scalia, who had been confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 1986, had a different brand of legal positivism than Anthony Kennedy, founded in a "respect" for the "original meaning" (originalism) of the words contained in the Constitution. He had on many occasions, including one time in my own hearing in a question-and-answer session at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, following a "communion breakfast" talk in May of 1987, said that, although he believes in the Natural Law, he could not use the Natural Law in the process of judicial decision-making.

Scalia went on to state that it is was belief that abortion is neither permitted or prohibited by the words of the United States Constitution, a contention that is arguable solely on the grounds of a proper reading of the text of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. According to Scalia, therefore, as abortion is a matter "reserved" for the states to decide for themselves as baby-killing is neither prohibited or permitted by the Constitution itself. He would be duty bound, he said, to uphold the constitutionality of a state law permitting abortion as long as it had been passed legally and did not violate that state's own constitutional provisions. "You write it," he told the crowd, "and I'll enforce it." This prompted me to write an extensive critique for The Wanderer of the fallacy of this exercise in positivism entitled, "You write it, I'll enforce it."

Each of the Catholics who serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America at the present time believe that the "people" have the final say as to what is considered legally acceptable, whether by means of the words of the United States Constitution, the provisions of state constitutions, the results of ballot initiatives at the state level designed to amend state constitutions or to overturn to revise state laws, or the language of state legislation. These Catholics (John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—Sonia Sotomayor is a baptized Catholic but does not any use for even the conciliar brand of Catholicism) do not understand or do not accept that human beings may not, whether acting individually or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance, permit grievous violations of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law or the Natural and/or seek to justify those violations of God's Law as matters that are "reserved" to "the people" to decide as they see fit.

The late Dr. Charles E. Rice, who was a professor at Notre Dame Law School between 1969 and 2000 (although he continued to teach a course on morality and law every year until his death on February 25, 2015) and was an ardent champion of the Natural Law, wrote the following about the fact that no one who supports the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings in any circumstance is qualified to hold any public office, whether elected or appointed:

Sen. D'Amato will face a pro-abortion Democratic opponent in the fall. While a voter could morally vote for a pro-abortion candidate who is less objectionable on abortion than his opponent, he should not. The tactic of voting for the less objectionable of two pro-abortion candidates is a tactic of incremental surrender. The incremental strategy of accepting the legalization of abortion in some cases concedes that some innocent human life is negotiable after all. The pro-death movement is a guaranteed winner against an opposition that qualifies its own position by conceding that there are some innocent human beings whom it will allow to be directly and intentionally killed. That approach in practice has mortgaged the pro-life effort to the interests and judgment of what Paul Johnson called "the great human scourge of the 20th century, the professional politician." (Modern Times, 1985, p. 510.)

When a politician says he favors legalized abortion in life of the mother, rape and incest, or other cases, he affirms the nonpersonhood of the unborn child by proposing that he be subjected to execution at the discretion of another. The politician's pro-life rhetoric will be drowned out by the loud and clear message of his position, that he concedes that the law can validly tolerate the intentional killing of innocent human beings. Apart from exceptions, of course, Sen. D'Amato is objectionable as well for some of his other stands on abortion and for his positions on other issues, including especially the homosexual issue.

Any candidate who believes that the law should treat any innocent human beings as nonpersons by tolerating their execution is unworthy to hold any public office, whether President, trustee of a mosquito abatement district, or senator. (Dr. Charles E. Rice, "Pro-Life Reflections on Sen. D'Amato," The Wanderer, August 27, 1998. Dr. Rice was kind enough to write this at a time when I was opposing then Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato for the senatorial nomination of the Right to Life Party of the State of New York.)

Those who serve in institutions of civil governance have a grave obligation before God to uphold the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted to and explicated by Holy Mother Church, she who is the sole teacher and authentic governor of all men and all nations in all that pertains to the good of souls and thus the right ordering of men and their nations. This truth applies to all men in all circumstances at all times. Contrary to the contentions made publicly by the late Antonin Scalia and Anthony McLeod Kennedy, Catholics, in particular, do indeed have a grave obligation to use the Faith as the basis of each of their actions at all times.

As I noted near the beginning of this long essay, the sophistry of separating a supposedly “private faith” from public life was condemned by Pope Leo XIII explained this very clearly in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

After all, did not a good deal of the English common law, which is still recognized at the Federal level as applicable in cases tried in Federal courts, have its origins as Catholic judges in Catholic England during the Middle Ages attempted to apply the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in concrete circumstances without "statutory guidance" from any kind of legislature, at least until the emergence of the Magna Carta in 1215?

The careerists in the organized naturalist crime family of the false opposite of the “right,” though, believe in a variation of “winning is the only thing” and/or “win, baby, win.” That which is “controversial” must be avoided once it becomes clear that actually acting on campaign promises carries with it the possibility of some electoral risk at the ever-important “next” election.

A Few Concluding Remarks

Let me reiterate a few salient points before concluding.

First, I believe that it is reasonable to presume that President Donald John Trump will appoint a nominee to replace Anthony McLeod Kennedy who will complement Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and, to a certain extent, Neil Gorsuch.

Second, the upcoming confirmation process will revolve around moral issues (surgical baby-killing and sodomy) that are beyond the ability of mere mortals to decide. Democrats will be unapologetic in their support of evil while Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee will hem and haw as they refuse to confront evil directly.

Third, the president’s nominee, if confirmed, will not place the decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade or Doe v. Bolton in jeopardy as Chief Justice John Glover Roberts will once again twist himself into a pretzel to preserve decisions that have no standing before the bar of Divine Justice.

Fourth, jurisprudence in a land whose founding document makes no place for Christ the King and His true Church will always hang on the slender threads of mere mortals who have straitjacketed themselves in a false belief that nothing “extraneous” to the Constitution can be used in their decision-making.

Although the subject of an upcoming article, the proliferation of errors in pluralistic nations such as the United States of America leads eventually to civil warfare. The so-called “antifa” movement, which led violent protests yesterday in Portland, Oregon, is ready to exploit existing divisions that can be traced back certainly to Original Sin but more proximately in time to Martin Luther’s revolution that overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King.

We must never surrender to the agitation, which is used by the adversary to keep us from prayer, especially by means of praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life exists.

We need to meditate pray and be agitated less by the events of our times. The devil desires us to spend our lives in perpetual agitation. This is what he does with endless news reports readily available on the internet or in the various other means of mass communication. All manner of people get very agitated during the quadrennial farce of hand-to-hand battle between competing sets of naturalists as they project onto the supposed “lesser evil” the status of a latter day King John of Austria or King John Sobieski of Poland (see ). Those who permit themselves to get so agitated and are permitting their souls to be needlessly agitated. We need to pray more and talk, including internet chatter, less.

More good can be done for the conversion of souls, upon which rests the entirety of personal and social order, by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits. Is one really called to spend large portions of his day trolling around the internet for news or various “theories” to “explain” world events?

Don't we know that all of the problems of the world, bar none, are caused by Original Sin and the Actual Sins of men, starting first and foremost with our own?

Don't we realize that we will be held to a strict accounting by Christ the King at the moment of our Particular Judgment for how well we have used our time, for any and all moments that we have wasted on vanities and needless gossip and time-consuming exercises in just plain old curiosity about things whose details will be made manifest to us on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead?

Isn't our time better spent praying more Rosaries than by wasting it as one is agitated by one naturalist myth after another?

One gets less agitated by the events around us as one prays more, especially, if possible in these days of apostasy and betrayal before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament and by means of His Most Blessed Mother's Holy Rosary. This does not mean that one is unconcerned about those events. There's more to “civic duty,” for example, than enabling the careers of competing sets of naturalists by believing that support rendered unto the “lesser evil” of the two will “retard” evil or, at the very least, prevent the “greater evil” that would have been done otherwise.

Fidelity to the Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary has won the day not only at Lepanto or the Gates of Vienna or The Philippines or Peru or Austria in 1955 as the Soviets ended the occupation of their part of the country, of course. Fidelity to Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary has saved countless souls from sin and error, saving them from eternal damnation in the process. In the process, of course, Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary has helped to reform nations, especially during the era of Christendom in the High Middle Ages.

Consider these words of Pope Leo XIII, contained in Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893:

13. But men of carnal mind, who love nothing but themselves, allow their thoughts to grovel upon things of earth until they are unable to lift them to that which is higher. For, far from using the goods of time as a help towards securing those which are eternal, they lose sight altogether of the world which is to come, and sink to the lowest depths of degradation. We may doubt if God could inflict upon man a more terrible punishment than to allow him to waste his whole life in the pursuit of earthly pleasures, and in forgetfulness of the happiness which alone lasts for ever.

14. It is from this danger that they will be happily rescued, who, in the pious practice of the Rosary, are wont, by frequent and fervent prayer, to keep before their minds the glorious mysteries. These mysteries are the means by which in the soul of a Christian a most clear light is shed upon the good things, hidden to sense, but visible to faith, "which God has prepared for those who love Him." From them we learn that death is not an annihilation which ends all things, but merely a migration and passage from life to life. By them we are taught that the path to Heaven lies open to all men, and as we behold Christ ascending thither, we recall the sweet words of His promise, "I go to prepare a place for you." By them we are reminded that a time will come when "God will wipe away every tear from our eyes," and that "neither mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow, shall be any more," and that "We shall be always with the Lord," and "like to the Lord, for we shall see Him as He is," and "drink of the torrent of His delight," as "fellow-citizens of the saints," in the blessed companionship of our glorious Queen and Mother. Dwelling upon such a prospect, our hearts are kindled with desire, and we exclaim, in the words of a great saint, "How vile grows the earth when I look up to heaven!" Then, too, shall we feel the solace of the assurance "that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv., 17).

15. Here alone we discover the true relation between time and eternity, between our life on earth and our life in heaven; and it is thus alone that are formed strong and noble characters. When such characters can be counted in large numbers, the dignity and well-being of society are assured. All that is beautiful, good, and true will flourish in the measure of its conformity to Him who is of all beauty, goodness, and truth the first Principle and the Eternal Source. (Pope Leo XIII, Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893.) 

We need Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary.

Men need to be reminded of this fact on a daily basis. Our Lady has exhorted us to pray her Most Holy Rosary. This may not get “votes.” This is one sure way to win the favor of Heaven and of planting seeds for the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith, without which there can be true order in the souls of men or in their societies.

None of the current problems we face can be remedied or even ameliorated as long as men continue to sin unrepentantly and as their nations protect grievously sinful behavior under cover of the civil law.

We need Our Lady. We need her Most Holy Rosary.

It is that simple.

We are lost without Our Lady and her Most Holy Rosary. 

Nations are lost without pilgrimages in honor of the Mother of God.

Lost.

Done for.

Kaput.

Everyone is but a midget naturalist who rejects the simple belief that all men and all nations must honor Our Lady. She told us so at the Visitation, which is commemorated liturgically today, the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because He as regarded the humility of His handmaid; for behold henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

Because He that is mighty, hath done great things for me; and holy is His name. And His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear Him.

He hath shewed might in his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent empty away. He hath received Israel His servant, being mindful of His mercy: as He spoke to Abraham and his seed for ever. (Lk. 1: 46-55) 

There is Heavenly work for us to do.

Let us quit our selfishness and our pessimism and anger and disordered pride once and for all.

As noted before in this commentary, God is visiting chastisements upon us for our own sins, our own lukewarmness, our own worldliness and for the many ways we waste our time by permitting us to succumb to the adversary’s agitations.

In this regard, therefore, it would be wise to consider the words spoken by Our Lady to the Venerable Mary of Agreda that are contained in The Mystical City of God, which explains that we are far from the sort of governance whereby those who exercise civil authority do so according to the mind of her Divine Son, Christ the King, as He has discharged It entirely to His Holy Church:

587. From many kingdoms and provinces where the Apostles were preaching numbers of converts came to Jerusalem in order to visit and converse with the Mother of the Redeemer of the world, at the same time offering rich gifts. Among others four sovereign princes, who were royal governors of provinces, visited Her and brought many valuable presents which they placed at her disposal for her own use and for the Apostles and disciples. The great Lady answered that She was poor like her Son, and the Apostles likewise were poor in imitation of their Master, and thus these riches were not appropriate to the life they professed. They begged Her to console them by accepting their gifts for the poor or for divine worship. Due to their persistent requests She received part of what they offered, and from some of it She wove rich vestments for the altar, while the rest She distributed among the indigent and the infirmaries, for She was accustomed to visit such places and often served and washed the poor with her own hands, performing such services, as well as distributing the alms, on her knees. Whenever it was possible She consoled the needy and assisted the sick in their last agony, nor did She ever rest from works of charity, either actually engaging in them or pleading and praying for others in her retirement.

588. She gave salutary advice to those princes or kings at their visit, admonishing them and instructing them in regard to the good government of their provinces. She charged them to watch over the equitable administration of justice without acceptation of persons; to consider themselves mortal men as all the rest; to fear the supreme Judge, by whom all are to be judged according to their own works; and above all to further the exaltation of the name of Christ and the propagation and security of the holy faith, in which alone the governments and monarchies can be solidly established, for without this government is but a lamentable and most unhappy slavery of the demons which is permitted by the hidden judgments of God for the punishment of both those who govern and who are governed. The fortunate princes promised faithfully to execute all of her instructions, and they afterwards remained in communication with the heavenly Queen through letters and other correspondence. The same happened to each one in particular who visited Her, for all of them left her presence more ardent in virtue, full of light, joy, and unspeakable consolation. Many upon seeing Her who were as yet unbelievers loudly professed their belief in the true God, for they were unable to restrain the interior forces awakened by the presence of his Blessed Mother. (The New English Edition of The Mystical City of God: The Coronation, Book 8, Chapter 10.)

This is the most precise summary of the Social Reign of Christ the King and what happens to men and their nations absent it that can be found.

Are there any more questions about why the world is in a mess?

Nations that do not acknowledge Christ the King and do not promote public no devotion to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, are doomed to be in “a lamentable and most unhappy slavery of the demons which is permitted by the hidden judgments of God for the punishment of both those who govern and who are governed.”

Isn’t it time for us all to pray a one set of mysteries of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary?

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady, Help of Christians, 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 Andrew the Apostle, 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.

Saints Processus and Martinian, pray for us.

Appendix

About Those Dead Masons

I know, I know, not all of the framers of the Constitution were formal lodge members, but each was infused with the spirit of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry. One does not have to belong to a Masonic lodge to be possessed of its spirit, a point made very clearly by Pope Leo XIII in Humanum Genus, June 20, 1888:

For, from what We have above most clearly shown, that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view -- namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism.

What We have said, and are about to say, must be understood of the sect of the Freemasons taken generically, and in so far as it comprises the associations kindred to it and confederated with it, but not of the individual members of them. There may be persons amongst these, and not a few who, although not free from the guilt of having entangled themselves in such associations, yet are neither themselves partners in their criminal acts nor aware of the ultimate object which they are endeavoring to attain. In the same way, some of the affiliated societies, perhaps, by no means approve of the extreme conclusions which they would, if consistent, embrace as necessarily following from their common principles, did not their very foulness strike them with horror. Some of these, again, are led by circumstances of times and places either to aim at smaller things than the others usually attempt or than they themselves would wish to attempt. They are not, however, for this reason, to be reckoned as alien to the masonic federation; for the masonic federation is to be judged not so much by the things which it has done, or brought to completion, as by the sum of its pronounced opinions. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1888.)

Yes, it is the sum of the "pronounced opinions" of Judeo-Masonry that matters, not any specific program or line of action, although there have been programs and lines of action (the establish of public schools and the mandating of curricula of study, legislation liberalizing divorce, attempts at imposing laws forbidding the wearing of clerical garb in public and of the operation of parochial schools, the promotion of contraception and abortion and licentiousness in civil law and public culture) that members of the lodges have undertaken over the course of this nation's history that were meant to be detrimental to the Faith. The Judeo-Masonic spirit convinces even believing Catholics that the social encyclical letters of our true popes don't apply to the United States of America, and that simple statements of Catholic truth, including the one below from Pope Saint Pius X's Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, have been made "obsolete" over the course of time:

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

Anyone who argues with this is not thinking clearly.