Jorge Mario Bergoglio Would Have Urged Catholics to "Dialogue" with Diocletian, part four

Although Jorge Mario Bergoglio continues to throw Catholics suffering at the hands of Communist regimes under the bus by implying in no so subtle terms that they are responsible for their persecution because they chose the path of “confrontation” rather than “dialogue,” our true popes rose in defense of persecuted Catholics nor did they shrink from their solemn duty to denounce evil and defend truth when the need arose for them to do so.

The previous three parts of this series have focused on how Popes Pius VI, VII, IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI denounced various evils in their own day, including the persecution of Catholics. This concluding commentary will focus on various aspects of Pope Pius XII’s very eventful pontificate, the entirety of which (1939-1958) was spent during the turbulent era of World War II and its aftermath during the start of the Cold War.

Praised During World War II but Calumniated Two Decades Later

As was the case with most of his immediate predecessors, save for Pope Saint Pius X, Pope Pius XI (Eugenio Pacelli) was trained in the diplomatic service of the Holy See and became a protégé of his predecessor as the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, who had negotiated the Lateran Concordat with Italian Premier Benito Mussolini in 1929 while ignoring the pleas of the Cristeros in Mexico following the ill-advised Vatican-approved ceasefire accord with the regime of Plutarco Elias Calles’s puppet successor, Emilio Portes Gil.

The Lateran Concordat of 1929 was signed on February 11, 1929, and it created the State of Vatican City and gave the Holy See extra-territorial rights along the Via della Conciliazione, built by Mussolini to commemorate the resolution of the "Roman Question," and in the Trastevere district of Rome and at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the popes. In return for the ending the self-imposed "imprisonment" of the popes in the Vatican since 1870, therefore, Cardinal Gasparri agreed to pledge Vatican neutrality in world conflicts.

Nevertheless, however, despite all the efforts to calumniate him in the 1960s and thereafter, Pope Pius XII spoke with courage as he defended the rights of all innocent human beings in Europe and was praised for it by the editorial writers of The New York Times:

The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. The Pope reiterates what he has said before. In general, he repeats, although with greater definiteness, the five-point plan for peace which he first enunciated in his Christmas message after the war broke out in 1939. His program agrees in fundamentals with the Roosevelt-Churchill eight-point declaration. It calls for respect for treaties and the end of the possibility of aggression, equal treatment for minorities, freedom from religious persecution. It goes farther than the Atlantic Charter in advocating an end of all national monopolies of economic wealth, and so far as the eight points, which demands complete disarmament for Germany pending some future limitation of arms for all nations.

The Pontiff emphasized principles of international morality with which most men of good-will agree. He uttered the ideas a spiritual leader would be expected to express in time of war. Yet his words sound strange and bold in the Europe of today, and we comprehend the complete submergence and enslavement of great nations, the very sources of our civilization, as we realize that he is about the only ruler left o the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all. The last tiny islands of neutrality are so hemmed in and overshadowed by war and fear that no one but the Pope is still able to speak aloud in the name of the Prince of Peace. This is indeed a measure of the "moral devastation" he describes as the accompaniment of physical ruin and inconceivable human suffering.

In calling for a "real new order" based on "liberty, justice and love," to be attained only by a "return to social and international principles capable of creating a barrier against the abuse of liberty and the abuse of power," the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism. Recognizing that there is no road open to agreement between belligerents "whose reciprocal war aims and programs seem to be irreconcilable," he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace. "The new order which must arise out of this war," he asserted, "must be based on principles." And that implies only one end to the war. (The New York Times, December 25, 1941.)

No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock on which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war. In these circumstances, in any circumstances, indeed, no one would expect the Pope to speak as a political leader, or a war leader, or in any other role than that of a preacher ordained to stand above the battle, tied impartially, as he says, to all people and willing to collaborate in any new order which will bring a just peace.

But just because the Pope speaks to and in some sense for all the peoples at war, the clear stand he takes on the fundamental issues of the conflict has greater weight and authority. When a leader bound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself: when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against "arbitrary attacks" the "juridical safety of individuals:" when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion: when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a "total peace" — the "impartial judgment" is like a verdict in a high court of justice.

Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing. (The New York Times, December 25, 1942. The Christmas Editorials on Pope Pius XII.) 

These editorials in The New York Times in 1941 and 1942 expressed beliefs that were held by many in the Talmudic Jewish community during and immediately after World War II, long before The Deputy began to propagandize lies against Pope Pius XII. Further Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir praised Pope Pius XII after his death in 1958 for what he had done to helped Jews during World War II. This article, written by Sister Margherita Marchione, Ph.D., contains a brilliant refutation of the baseless charges still being made by Talmudic Jews that have been responsible, at least in part, for the conciliar Vatican's decision to "slow down" its bogus "canonization" process:

Pope Pius XII was not a German collaborator nor was he pro-Nazi. Neither was he inactive nor silent. As a member of the Catholic Church, I resent the blatant accusations against the diplomacy of the Pope and the Church during World War II. This is not only indecent journalism but it also an injustice toward a man who saved more Jews than any other person, including Oscar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg. Unfortunately even in the new Holocaust Museum at Battery Park in New York City the Pope is unjustly criticized. It is historically inaccurate to charge him with "silence."

Should the media be allowed to perpetuate such falsehoods? Documents prove that these misrepresentations are untrue. Pius XII spoke out as much as he could, and was able to do more with actions than with words. To the very end, he was convinced that, should he denounce Hitler publicly, there would be retaliation. And there was. Whenever protests were made, treatment of prisoners worsened immediately. Robert Kempner, the American who served as deputy chief of the Nuremburg war-crimes tribunal, wrote: "All the arguments and writings eventually used by the Catholic Church against Hitler only provoked suicide; the execution of Jews was followed by that of Catholic priests."

Pius XII—through his public discourses, his appeals to governments, and his secret diplomacy—was engaged more than any other individual in the effort to curb the war and rebuild the peace. Documents show that Pius XII was in contact with the German generals who sought to overthrow Hitler. Documents also show that the Jewish community received enormous help: Pius XII’s personal funds ransomed Jews from Nazis. Papal representatives in Croatia, Hungary, and Romania intervened to stop deportations. The Pope called for a peace conference involving Italy, France, England, Germany, and Poland in 1939, in a last-minute bid to avert bloodshed.

An interesting document is the testimony of Albert Einstein who, disenchanted by the silence of universities and editors of newspapers, stated in Time magazine (December 23, 1940): "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. …The Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom." Indeed, executing the directives of Pope Pius XII, religious men and women opened their doors to save the Jews.

Never were the Jews and the Vatican so close as during World War II. The Vatican was the only place on the continent where they had any friends. Pope Pius XII’s response to the plight of the Jews was to save as many as possible. Yet little has been done to stop the criticism of Pius XII that began in 1963, when Rolf Hochhuth portrayed him as a Nazi collaborator in the play "The Deputy." In contrast to the image suggested by this play, Vatican records indicate that the Church operated an underground railroad that rescued 800,000 European Jews from the Holocaust. After a careful study of available documents, whoever is interested in the truth will no longer condemn the actions of Pope Pius XII’s words and the Catholic Church during this tragic period.

An honest evaluation of Pope Pius XII’s words and actions will exonerate him from false accusations and show that he has been unjustly maligned. The Pope neither favored nor was favored by the Nazis. The day after his election (March 3, 1939), the Nazi newspaper, Berliner Morganpost stated its position clearly: "the election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism."

The New York Times editorial (December 25, 1942) was specific: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas...He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all." The Pope’s Christmas message was also interpreted in the Gestapo report: "in a manner never known before...the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order [Nazism]. It is true, the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for. …Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews." Perhaps the rest of the world should interpret the Pope’s words as they were meant and, undoubtedly, correctly understood by the Nazis, i.e.: POPE PIUS XII WAS ALWAYS OPPOSED TO NAZISM.

The Jewish Community publicly acknowledged the wisdom of Pope Pius XII’s diplomacy. In September 1945, Dr. Joseph Nathan—who represented the Hebrew Commission—stated "Above all, we acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff and the religious men and women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father, recognized the persecuted as their brothers and, with great abnegation, hastened to help them, disregarding the terrible dangers to which they were exposed." In 1958, at the death of Pope Pius XII, Golda Meir sent an eloquent message: "We share in the grief of humanity. …When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace." (The Truth About Pope Pius XII.)

The Talmudists and other “experts” know something that Golda Meir did not know or understand over sixty years ago now?

Nonsense. 

Admitting that the remote causes for the unrelenting nature of the Talmudic attacks upon the memory of Pope Pius XII stems from a hatred of the Faith and Talmudic Judaism's alliances with all other naturalist and anti-Theistic forces imaginable, including Bolshevism, there is a proximate reason for the calumnies that have been aimed at Pope Pius XII: this Successor of Saint Peter is directly, personally responsible for the conversion to the Catholic Faith of the Grand Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, on February 13, 1945.

Rabbi Zolli converted to the true Faith at the hands of Pope Pius XII, taking the baptismal name of Eugenio Maria after the former Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli himself. The fact that a man who came from a long line of Talmudic rabbis dared to convert to the hated Catholic Faith in the final months of World War II in Europe infuriated the devil, who used his legions in the ranks of Talmudic Judaism to make war upon Pope Pius XII after his death and when they knew that his very enemies inside of the conciliar Vatican itself, men whom, most ironically, that Pope Pius XII had appointed and promoted, would do nothing to stop.

Here is Eugenio Maria Zolli's account of his conversion as contained in his autobiography, Before the Dawn:

Rabbi Zolli, did you become a convert out of gratitude towards the Pope, who did so much for the Jews of Italy during the Nazi persecution?

This question was addressed to me, and still is, by reporters. In many interviews (inaccurate or invented) they describe me as answering in the affirmative. Why? I suppose to please readers by providing them with a precise and pleasing explanation. In reality my reply has always been in the negative, but this ought not to be interpreted as a lack of gratitude. ...At the very hour in which the terrible sacrificial rite of blood was initiated, the destruction en masse in the name of race, of nation, of the state, concentrating the three into one factor: blood precisely then, in the midst of so many fanatics, the great Pontiff, unique, serene and wise, exclaims: But the legitimate and just love towards one's own country must not close the eyes to the universality of Christian charity which also considers others and their prosperity in the pacifying light of love! ...Volumes could be written on the multiform works of succour of Pius XII... Who could ever tell what has been done? The rule of severe enclosure falls, everything and all things are at the service of charity. As the sufferings grow, so grows the light from the heart of Christ, and from His Vicar: more vigilant and ready for sacrifice and martyrdom are his sons and daughters in Christ. Young Levites and white-haired priests, religious of alt orders, in all lands, dedicated Sisters, all in quest of good works and ready for sacrifice. There are no barriers, no distinctions. All sufferers are children of God in the eyes of the Church, children in Christ, for them and with them all suffer and die. No hero in history has commanded such an army; none is more militant, more fought against, none more heroic than that conducted by Pius XII in the name of Christian charity. An old priest, who could do nothing further, gathered around him in the church the women and children of the village (the men had been slaughtered outside the village) so that they might die together in the presence of the crucifix. His dead body is thrown upon the altar, where once he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice, and there he lies, himself sacrificed. An army of priests works in cities and small towns to provide bread for the persecuted and passports for the fugitives. Sisters go into unheated canteens to give hospitality to women refugees. Orphans of all nations and religions are gathered together and cared for. No economic sacrifice is considered too great to help the innocent to flee to foreign lands from those who seek their death. A religious, a most learned man, works incessantly to save Jews, and himself dies a martyr. Sisters endure hunger to feed the refugees. Superiors go out in the night to meet strange soldiers who demand victims. They manage, at the risk of their lives, to convey the impression that they have none they, who have several in their care. The attic of one of the great churches in the center of Rome is divided into many sections, each bearing the name of the saint in whose honor the altar below is dedicated. The refugees are divided for the distribution of food into groups according to the names of these saints. Must not the soul of the saint rejoice in such a tribute? Schools, administrative offices, churches, convents all have their guests....

At the first hour of his pontificate Pius XII said: Exactly in times like these, he who remains firm in his faith and strong in his heart, knows that Christ the King is never so near as in trial, which is the hour of fidelity. With a heart broken by the suffering of so many of her children, but with the courage and firmness that come from faith in the Lord's promises, the Spouse of Christ [the Church], advances towards the approaching storm. She knows that the truth she announces, the charity she teaches, and its practice will be the unique counsellors and collaborators of men of good will in the reconstruction of a new world, in justice and love, after humanity, weary of running in the way of error, will have tasted the bitter fruit of hatred and of violence.

Many are the books by statisticians, generals, journalists, and many are the memoirs of individuals concerning this great war. The archives hold quantities of material for future historians. But who, outside of God in heaven, has gathered into his heart the sorrows and the groans of all the injured? Like a watchful sentinel before the sacred inheritance of human pain stands the angelic Pastor, Pius XII. He has seen the abyss of misfortune towards which humanity is advancing. He has measured and foretold the greatness of the tragedy. He has made himself the herald of the serene voice of justice and the defender of true peace.... I did not hesitate to give a negative answer to the question whether I was converted in gratitude to Pius XII for his numberless acts of charity. Nevertheless, I do feel the duty of rendering homage and of affirming that the charity of the Gospel was the light that showed the way to my old and weary heart. It is the charity that so often shines in the history of the Church and which radiated fully in the actions of the reigning Pontiff.

- from Before the Dawn, Chapter 17 (The book is available from Inside the Vatican) Inside the Vatican, Martin de Porres Lay Dominican Community, 3050 Gap Knob Road, New Hope, KY 40052, 800-789-9494. Before the Dawn.) 

How many conciliar officials write or speak about the Faith in the moving terms that Eugenio Maria Zolli did in his autobiography?

Not many.

Not many at all.

The attacks upon Pope Pius XII by Talmudists after his death were fueled in large part by a desire to create a sense of “collective guilt” during the ongoing proceedings of the “Second” Vatican Council in order to produce a “new springtime” of “understanding” between the counterfeit church of conciliarism and Talmudism and thus end all talk of Judaism’s having been superseded by the New and Eternal Covenant instituted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and ratified by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday as the curtain in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom, signifying the end of the Old Dispensation and the beginning of the New Dispensation.

Despite all that Pope Pius XII did to help the Jews during World War II, though, Talmudists were determined to besmirch his name because His Holiness reminded the world of truth about Judaism as a dead religion in the following passages of Mystici Corporis Christi, June 29, 1943:

28.That He completed His work on the gibbet of the Cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers who assert that the Church was born from the side of our Savior on the Cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living. [28] "And it is now," says the great St. Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, "that it is built, it is now that it is formed, it is now that is .... molded, it is now that it is created . . . Now it is that arises a spiritual house, a holy priesthood." [29] One who reverently examines this venerable teaching will easily discover the reasons on which it is based.

29. And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area -- He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel [30] -the Law and the Gospel were together in force; [31but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees, [32] fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, [33] establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. [34] "To such an extent, then," says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, "was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom." [35]

30. On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, [36] in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers; [37] and although He had been constituted the Head of the whole human family in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, it is by the power of the Cross that our Savior exercises fully the office itself of Head in His Church. "For it was through His triumph on the Cross," according to the teaching of the Angelic and Common Doctor, "that He won power and dominion over the gentiles"; [38] by that same victory He increased the immense treasure of graces, which, as He reigns in glory in heaven, He lavishes continually on His mortal members it was by His blood shed on the Cross that God's anger was averted and that all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces of the New and Eternal Testament, could then flow from the fountains of our Savior for the salvation of men, of the faithful above all; it was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that He entered into possession of His Church, that is, of all the members of His Mystical Body; for they would not have been united to this Mystical Body. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)

Not even the defense of Pope Pius XII by a number of prominent Jewish rabbis has been able to overcome the calumnies that have been directed at Pope Pius XII by Talmudic Jews since 1963. A defector from Romania under the late dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, Ion Mihai Pacepa, claimed in 2013 that The Deputy and the propaganda that stemmed from it was encouraged by the K.G.B. of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in order to defame Pope Pius XII, a firm anti-Communist (in stark contrast to Angelo Roncalli, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini and Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself), as a sympathizer of the Adolf Hitler's Third Reich:

In “Disinformation” – subtitled “Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism” – Pacepa reveals the thinking and approach behind Soviet bloc disinformation operations. He also provides new details about Romania under Ceauşescu, Soviet efforts to implicate the CIA in the Kennedy assassination and Kremlin-directed efforts to frame the Catholic leader during World War II, Pope Pius XII, as being “Hitler’s pope.” (Ion Mihai Papcepa: Hero to the West and Romania.)

Shouldn't this be proof enough?

The Bolshevik Revolution was launched with the financial help of Talmudists seeking to end the hold of Russian Orthodoxy on Russia, and Marxism-Leninism has always had the support of a large, although not exclusive, number of Jewish financiers, academics and fellow travelers because it has been seen as the means to eradicate Christianity from public view and then to criminalize those who profess the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, something that has been occurring in the midst of the so-called “civilized” West for decades and is now part of official state-sponsored programs of support of the “woke” agenda of those whose brains are truly dead to the truth because they are in utter captivity to the devil himself. It is because Pope Pius XII firmly denounced Communism throughout his pontificate that he was later subjected to calumnious attacks from the very Talmudists whose co-religionists His Holiness had expended efforts to save that earned him the plaudits of their very own within during and after World War II. It was only after his death that the Judaizing Angelo Roncalli and Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini winked as the pope of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was calumniated by Soviet propaganda marketed in the West by means of theatrical productions and alleged works of “scholarship.” Roncalli and Montini winked because their openness to the “world” included an openness to Communism and to Communist regimes throughout the world, which is why Pope Pius XII and his opposition to Communism had to be eclipsed by all means possible.

The lesson here is inescapable: The leaders of the counterfeit church of conciliarism will brook no opposition to their rapprochement with all the errors of Judeo-Masonry, including Communism in all its many forms and varieties, which is why Pope Pius XII’s sterling record of firm opposition to Communism must not only be flushed down the Orwellian memory hole but supplanted by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Pietro Parolin’s obsequiousness towards the likes of Daniel Ortega and Xi Jinping that makes a mockery of the concept of Catholic martyrdom as to denounce the courage of Catholics resisting evil contemporaneously as nothing other than egotistic acts of “confrontation” is to imply that all those in the past who stood up to anti-Catholic tyrants brought their deaths upon themselves needlessly by refusing to engage in “dialogue.” Yet is that Catholics do not “dialogue” with the devil or his associates in this passing, mortal vale of tears.

Pope Pius XII Defended Catholics Being Persecuted by Communist Regimes

Contrast Pietro Parolin’s mild statement of regret about “Cardinal” Zen’s arrest with the indignation of Pope Pius XII upon learning the news of the arrest of the Primage of Hungary, Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty by the Communist authorities there:

ROME, Dec. 27 — Pope Pius was said today to have been profoundly grieved and shocked at news of the arrest of Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty, Primate of Hungary. Confirmation of the arrest with no details was received by the papal Secretary of State late tonight. (Pope Pius is Profoundly Shocked by the Arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty and also Cardinal Mindzsenty Seized by Red Regime in Hungary. That last link is an actual headline from The New York Times!)

Cardinal Midszenty’s show trial prompted His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, to deliver an allocution on February 14, 1949, the Feast of Saint Valentine, that was published in total by The New York Times:

Venerable Brethren, we have convoked this extraordinary consistory today in order to unfold to you our soul, which is crushed with most bitter grief. You will readily understand the reason of our sorrow: it concerns a most serious outrage which inflicts a deep wound not only on your distinguished colleague and on the church, but also on every upholder of the dignity and liberty of man. As soon as ever we knew that our beloved son, Joseph Cardinal Midszenty, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Archbishop of Estergrom, was cast into prison due to religion we sent a loving message to the Hungarian hierarchy in which we publicly and solemnly protest, our duty demanded, against the injury done to the church.

At present, when things have come to such a pass that this most worthy prelate has been reduced to supreme indignity and condemned like a criminal to life imprisonment, we cannot but repeat this solemn protest in your presence. We are prompted to do this primarily on behalf of the moral rights of religion which this valiant prelate tirelessly propounded and defended so strenuously and courageously. Besides, unanimous consensus of free peoples, expressed in speech and writings even by leaders of nations and by those who do not belong to the Catholic Church has been given the fullest light of publicity.

But, as you are aware, the full light of publicity did not shine over the trial of this prelate who deserved so well of all, in defending the religion of his ancestors and in the restoration of Christian morals. In fact, from the beginning the news that arrived caused alarm. People outside Hungary who asked permission to be present at the trial were refused permission if they seemed likely to judge impartiality or to give a sincere report: This led them to believe, and all upright and honest men as well, that those who were conducting the trial in Budapest seemed to be afraid to allow all to see what was taking place.

Justice, which is worthy of the name, does not begin with prejudices and is not based on a decision previously taken, but it gladly admits of free discussion and gives everyone due facility for thinking, believing and speaking.

But although the facts have set not been reliably made known, or reported clearly and completely, we cannot omit mentioning the judgment which all civilized people have passed on this trial. Referring particularly to the speed with which it was conducted; thus suggesting a ready reason for suspicion; of accusations captiously and deceitfully contrived; and to the physical condition of the Cardinal, which is indeed inexplicable except as a result of a secret influence which may not be publicly revealed, to prove this there is the fact which suddenly made of a man, until then exceptionally energetic by nature and by way of life, a feeble being and of vacillating mind, so that his behavior appeared, an accusation not against himself but against his very accusers and condemners.

In all this matter one thing alone stands out clearly: The principal object of the trial was to disrupt the Catholic Church in Hungary and precisely for the purpose set forth in sacred scripture: “I shall strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be dispersed (Matt. XXVI, 31.)

While this sorrow in our heart we deplore this very sad event and entrust it in a sense to public opinion and the tribunal of history for the final judgment, we are doing what the outraged rights of the church and the dignity of the human person demand.

We deem it especially our duty to brand as completely false the assertion made in the course of the trial that the whole question at issue was that this Apostolic See, in furtherance of a plan for political domination of nations, gave instructions to oppose the Republic of Hungary and its rulers: thus all responsibility would fall on the same Apostolic See.

Everybody knows that the Catholic Church does not act through worldly motives, and that she accepts any and every form of civil government provided it not be inconsistent with divine and human rights. But when it does contradict these rights, Bishops and the faithful themselves are bound, by their own conscience to resist unjust laws.

In the midst of this grievous anguish, however, venerable brethren, the “Father of Mercies” (cf. II. Cor 1, 3) has not left us without consolations from above which have served to mitigate our sorrow. It is consoling above all to witness the tenacious faith of the Catholics of Hungary who are doing all they can, though faced with serious obstacles and difficulties, to defend their age-old religion and to keep alive and fresh the glorious tradition of their ancestors. Solace comes to us from the unflinching confidence we cherish in our paternal heart that the Hungarian episcopate, acting in complete harmony of principle of practice, will labor with every resource at their command to strengthen the unity of the faithful and buoy them up  with that hope which can neither be extinguished nor dimmed by sad or unjust happenings of this life, because it has its source in heaven, and is fed by a grace divine.

From you, venerable brethren, similar heavenly solace has come to us. For we have seen you gathered close about us in this crisis, to share our sorrow and unite your prayers to ours. We have been heartened likewise by the other Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops of whole Catholic world, who along with their clergy and people have express by fervid letter and telegrams their reprobation for the outrage offered to the church, and promised us their public and private prayers.

We earnestly desire that these prayers should continue to rise before the throne of God. For as often as the church is tossed by such tempests as cannot be quelled by human means, one must  appeal with confidence to the Divine Redeemer, who alone can calm the swelling waves and restore them to peace and tranquility. Through the most powerful intercession of the Virgin Mother of God, let us all pray fervently that those who suffer persecution, imprisonment and hardship, may be consoled with the necessary help of divine grace and fortified with the strength of Christian virtue; that those who rashly dare to trample upon the liberty of the church and the rights of human conscience, may at length understand that no civil society can endure when religion has been suppressed and God, as it were, driven into exile. It is only the sacred principles of religion that can moderated within the limits of reason the duties and the rights of citizens, can consolidate the foundations of the state, and make men’s lives conform to the salutary norms and morality, restoring them to order and virtue.

The words of the greatest Roman orator: “High priests, you defend the city more securely by religion than by its surrounding walls” (De Nat Deor. III, 40), when applied to Christian precepts and faith is infinitely more true and certain. Let all those into whose hands public government has been entrusted, recognize this truth and let due liberty be everywhere restored to the church that untrammeled she may be able to enlighten the minds of men with her salutary doctrine. Rightly instruct youth and lead them to virtue, restore to families their sacred character, and permeate with her influence the whole life of men. Civil society has nothing to fear from this activity but rather will reap the greatest advantages. It is then, venerable brethren, that social questions will be solved with justice and equity; the conditions of the poor will be ameliorated, as is just, and they will be restored to a state befitting the dignity of man; fraternal charity will bring peace to men’s minds and better days and better days as we fondly hope and pray, will happily ensue for all peoples and races.

These are the words we wished to speak in this illustrious assembly to you who are so closely associated with us in the government of the universal church and assist us with your zeal, your prudence and your wisdom. (Pope Pius XII, Allocution on the Cardinal Mindszenty, as found at: New York Times, February 15, 1949. Let me, Thomas Droleskey, add at this juncture that I followed events of Cardinal Mindszenty’s being released from prison during the Hungarian Revolution October of 1956 and his then having to take refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest. This was big news, and it was the news, not the lives of the saints, unfortunately, that was discussed at our dinner table each night. Additionally, I had the privilege of serving as the altar boy for Monsignor Bela Varga, who was the Speaker of the Hungarian Assembly from 1945 to 1947, who had worked with His Eminence for many years before he, Varga, fled to the United States in 1947, when he has the chaplain aboard the S.S. France on a Caribbean cruise from December 20, 1963, to January 4, 1965, and I was taught by no less than three Hungarian refugees in college and graduate school, including Dr. Stephen Kertesz, who resigned his post as the Hungarian Ambassador to Italy following the arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty. Monsignor Bela Varga gave an interview on March 22, 1979, to a professor at Columbia University. Those conversant in the Hungarian language can listen to this interview at: Oral history with Monsignor Bela Varga.)

While admitting full well that that the arrest of “Cardinal” Zen is not quite the same thing that happened to Cardinal Mindszenty as Zen was participating in a “pro-democracy” rally, it is nevertheless true that Pietro Parolin’s very impassive response to Zen’s arrest and Bergoglio’s silence about it stand in sharp contrast to Pope Pius XII’s consistent denunciations of the Communist persecution of Catholic prelates and clergy during the last thirteen years of his pontificate during the beginning of the Cold War. Pope Pius XII did not mince words, and he did not seek to curry any favor with Communist authorities while making all the proper distinctions between respecting those governments that respect the liberties of Holy Mother Church and those, such as Communist regimes, who do not.

Pope Pius XII was equally outspoken following the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of the Primate of Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, in 1953, and the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of Joseph Cardinal Kung three years later. (A summary of the sufferings of Cardinals Mindszenty and Wyszynski, can be found at: Mindszenty and Wyszynski.)

Flushing the Memory of the Catholic Martyrs of Red China Down the Orwellian Memory Hole

Pope Pius XII firmly opposed the Communist persecution of Catholics by the Red Chinese authorities even more the formation of the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. He noted the following in Ad Sinarum Gentes, October 7, 1954:

23. We want to repeat here the words that We have written on the same argument in the letter already cited: “The Church does not single out a particular people, an individual nation, but loves all men, whatever be their nation or race, with that supernatural charity of Christ, which should necessarily unite all as brothers, one to the other.

24. “Hence it cannot be affirmed that she serves the interests of any particular power. Nor likewise can she be expected to countenance that particular churches be set up in each nation, thus destroying that unity established by the Divine Founder, and unhappily separating them from this Apostolic See where Peter, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, continues to live in his successors until the end of time.

25. “Whatever Christian community were to do this, would lose its vitality as the branch cut from the vine (Cf. John 15. 6) and could not bring forth salutary fruit” (AAS, 44: p. 135).

26. We earnestly exhort “in the heart of Christ” (Phil. 1. 8) those faithful of whom We have mournfully written above to come back to the path of repentance and salvation. Let them remember that, when it is necessary, one must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and with greater reason, one must render to God what is God’s (Cf. Luke 20. 25). When men demand things contrary to the Divine Will, then it is necessary to put into practice the maxim of St. Peter: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5. 29). Let them also remember that it is impossible to serve two masters, if these order things opposed to one another (Cf. Matt. 6. 24). Also at times it is impossible to please both Jesus Christ and men (Cf. Gal. 1. 10). But if it sometimes happens that he who wishes to remain faithful to the Divine Redeemer even unto death must suffer great harm, let him bear it with a strong and serene soul.

27. On the other hand, We wish to congratulate repeatedly those who, suffering severe difficulties, have been outstanding in their loyalty to God and to the Catholic Church, and so have been “counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5. 41). With a paternal heart We encourage them to continue brave and intrepid along the road they have taken, keeping in mind the words of Jesus Christ: “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather be afraid of him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell . . . But as for you, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not be afraid . . . Therefore everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I in turn will disown him before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10. 28, 30-33). (Pope Pius XII, Ad Sinarum Gentes, October 7, 1954.)

What does this matter to Jorge Mario Bergoglio?

Why, nothing at all, of course. He wants his “bishops” and priests/presbyters to be collaborators with Communist regimes. Bergoglio is an apologist for everything that Bishop James Walsh and Bishop Ignatius Kung opposed by sacrificing their liberty and against which Bishop Francis Ford gave up his life after being worn out by Communist torturers.

It is often the case in the history of Holy Mother Church during times of persecutions that her martyrs suffer together. Such continues to be the case in Red China today just as much as it was sixty-two years ago during the Chicom show trials that sentenced Bishops James Edward Walsh and Ignatius Kung to prison. How sad it is the evangelizing efforts and sufferings of these two great Catholic heroes have been considered by Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio as part of a “memory of the past” that needs to be “purified.”

The official biography of Bishop Ignatius Kung found on the Cardinal Kung Foundation website provides us with a glimpse of the sort of Catholic heroism that means nothing to Jorge Mario Bergoglio:

Bishop Kung had been Bishop of Shanghai and Apostolic Administrator of two other dioceses for only five years before he was arrested by the Chinese government. In just 5 short years, Bishop Kung became one of the most feared enemies of the Chinese Communists - a man who commanded both the attention and devotion of the country's then three million Roman Catholics and the highest respect of his brother bishops in China, and inspired thousands to offer their lives up to God. In defiance of the communist created and sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, Bishop Kung personally supervised the Legion of Mary, a religious organization of the laity dedicated to the veneration of the Blessed Mother Mary. As the result, many members of the Legion of Mary chose to risk arrest in the name of their God, of their Church and of their bishop. Hundreds of Legion of Mary members, including many students, were arrested and sentenced to 10, 15, or 20 years or more of hard labor.

In the midst of persecutions, Bishop Kung declared 1952 the Marian Year in Shanghai. During that year, there was to be uninterrupted 24 hours-daily recitation of the rosary in front of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which toured all the parishes of Shanghai. The Holy Statue finally arrived at Christ the King Church where a major arrest of the priests had just taken place only a month ago. Bishop Kung visited that church and personally led the rosary while hundreds of the armed police looked on. At the end of the rosary, leading the congregation, Bishop Kung prayed: "Holy Mother, we do not ask you for a miracle. We do not beg you to stop the persecutions. But we beg you to support us who are very weak."

Knowing that he and his priests would soon be arrested, Bishop Kung trained hundreds of catechists to pass on the Roman Catholic faith in the diocese to future generations.

The heroic efforts of these catechists, their martyrdom and that of many faithful and clergy contributed to the vibrant underground Roman Catholic Church in China today. Bishop Kung's place in the hearts of his parishioners was very well summed up by the Shanghai youth group in a 1953 New Year youth rally when they said: "Bishop Kung, in darkness, you light up our path. You guide us on our treacherous journey. You sustain our faith and the traditions of the Church. You are the foundation rock of our Church in Shanghai."

On September 8, 1955, the press around the world reported in shock the overnight arrest of Bishop Kung along with more than 200 priests and Church leaders in Shanghai. Months after his arrest, he was taken out to a mob "struggle session" in the old Dog Racing stadium in Shanghai. Thousands were ordered to attend and to hear the Bishop's public confession of his "crimes." With his hands tied behind his back, wearing a Chinese pajama suit, the 5-foot tall bishop was pushed forward to the microphone to confess. To the shock of the security police, they heard a righteous loud cry of "Long live Christ the King, Long live the Pope" from the Bishop. The crowd responded immediately, "Long live Christ the King, Long live Bishop Kung". Bishop Kung was quickly dragged away to the police car and disappeared from the world until he was brought to trial in 1960. Bishop Kung was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The night before he was brought to trial, the Chief Prosecutor asked once again for his cooperation to lead the independent church movement and to establish the Chinese Patriotic Association. His answer was: "I am a Roman Catholic Bishop. If I denounce the Holy Father, not only would I not be a Bishop, I would not even be a Catholic. You can cut off my head, but you can never take away my duties."

Bishop Kung vanished behind bars for thirty years. During those thirty years, he spent many long periods in isolation. Numerous requests to visit Bishop Kung in prison by international religious and human rights organizations and senior foreign government officials were rejected. He was not permitted to receive visitors, including his relatives, letters, or money to buy essentials, which are rights of other prisoners.

The efforts for his release by his family, led by his nephew, Joseph Kung, by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Red Cross, and the United States Government, never ceased. In 1985, he was released from jail to serve another term of 10 years of house arrest under the custody of those Patriotic Association bishops who betrayed him and betrayed the Pope and who usurped his diocese. In an article immediately after his release from jail, the New York Times said that the ambiguous wording of the Chinese news agency suggested that the authorities, not the bishop, might have relented. After two and one-half years of house arrest, he was officially released. However, his charge of being a counterrevolutionary was never exonerated. In 1988, his nephew, Joseph Kung, went to China twice and obtained permission to escort him to America for receiving proper medical care.

Shortly before Bishop Kung was released from jail, he was permitted to join a banquet organized by the Shanghai government to welcome His eminence Cardinal Jaime Sin, Archbishop of Manila, Philippines on a friendship visit. This was the first time that Bishop Kung had met a visiting bishop from the universal Church since his imprisonment. Cardinal Sin and Bishop Kung were seated on opposite ends of the table separated by more than 20 Communists, and had no chance to exchange words privately. During the dinner, Cardinal Sin suggested that each person should sing a song to celebrate. When the time came for Bishop Kung to sing, in the presence of the Chinese government officials and the Patriotic Association bishops, he looked directly at Cardinal Sin and sang "Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam" (You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church), a song of faith proclaiming the supreme authority of the Pope. Bishop Kung conveyed to Cardinal Sin that in all his years of captivity he remained faithful to God, to his Church and to the Pope.

After the banquet, Aloysius Jin, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association's Bishop of Shanghai, rebuked Cardinal Kung, "What are you trying to do? Showing your position?" Cardinal Kung quietly answered, "It is not necessary to show my position. My position has never changed."

Cardinal Sin immediately carried Cardinal Kung's message to the Holy Father and announced to the world: this man of God never faltered in his love for his Church or his people despite unimaginable suffering, isolation and pain. (Biography of Cardinal Kung.)

Bishop Kung's nephew, Joseph Kung, who is now eighty-nine years of age, was kind enough to have invited us to a luncheon at his house in Stamford, Connecticut, in June of 2003, I believe, and he showed us the room where his courageous uncle had died. Joseph also showed us a diary in which Bishop Kung wrote the Ordinary of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition while in prison in Red China. His jailers kept taking away the book from him, but Bishop Kung always seemed to find the paper that he needed to write the Ordinary of the Mass in exquisite handwriting. Bishop Kung won this contest of wills as he was aided by Our Lady's intercession in his behalf. The jailers finally relented and let him continue his work without any further efforts to confiscate it. Bishop Kung was dedicated to the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is always mocking, including in a children's book in 2016 (see Jorge's Wall of Unbelief.)

Now, leaving aside the fact that Jaimie Sin was no "cardinal," Bishop Ignatius Kung suffered for his fealty to the Throne of Saint Peter. He had no way of knowing that a revolution that had much in common with Marxism had created a counter church with false liturgical rites as he was imprisoned, and he was so grateful to the third in the current line of antipopes that he never understood what had happened while he was held incommunicado for over thirty years. Bishop Kung, however, was courageous in his steadfast defense of the Catholic Faith and of Papal Primacy in the face of vicious Communist persecution against him. He lived for Christ the King just as much as had Padre Miguel Agustin Pro, S.J., and the Cristeros in Mexico (as well as the Spanish Cristeros who died at the hands of Communists, many of whom had the support of American celebrities, including author Ernest Hemmingway, between 1936 and 1939). He did not accord the schismatic and heretical rump church created by the Red Chinese government, the so-called Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, as having any legitimacy whatsoever. He was a true son of Holy Mother Church who always denounced falsehood when he saw it, never failing to call it by its proper name.

A “reconciliation” with the Red Chinese butchers, however, has been a goal of the conciliar revolutionaries for over fifty years now.

Indeed, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul the Sick tried such a reconciliation surrender as early as January 6, 1967, the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when used the fortieth anniversary of the consecration of the first bishops to serve China to remind the Chinese people of the Catholic Church’s love for them. While he took note generally of the sufferings of the faithful Catholics in Red China, he also made it clear that he wanted to extend his Ostpolitik that made the Catholic hierarchy of Eastern Europe answerable to their Communist minders all the way to Red China itself. What follows is a computer translation of the relevant passages Montini/Paul VI’s sermon dealing with China:

Yes, you know. We have chosen this moment, this place, this assembly and this feast to remember, with celebratory joy and with antiseptic hope, a double anniversary: ​​that of the consecration of the first six Chinese bishops, which took place forty years ago, on October 28, 1926, in this same basilica, by the hand of Our predecessor of venerated and great memory, Pius XI, and that of the canonical institution, normal of the sacred Hierarchy in China, decreed twenty years ago, in 1946, by another Our no less venerated and great predecessor, Pius XII.

Why celebrate these anniversaries? Because the two facts, which We want to remember with religious and collected solemnity, are great facts, they are historical facts, they are facts full of human and spiritual significance, and because they are facts that postulate their regular and happy following, which instead meets in these last few years have had serious and painful difficulties. The facts are known to you. Religious freedom in mainland China faces serious obstacles; Our communications are completely prevented; the Ecumenical Council did not see any member of that Hierarchy present; all the Missionaries were expelled; the Catholic Church, this same Apostolic See is accused of being contrary to the Chinese people. Now all this has no reason to exist; and we could prove it with many arguments. The Catholic Church, everyone knows, he has always looked upon China with immense sympathy; a long and dramatic history of her relations with the Chinese people says with what esteem, with what dedication she wished to know him, without any temporal interest of her own; she wished to serve him, trying to help him develop his intrinsic moral riches and offering the best she possesses to contribute to the education, assistance and prestige of the people themselves. It is well known how in that resurgent country Catholic life - especially by virtue of the events we are commemorating - has completely renounced being and appearing a paracolonial phenomenon, and how it is and wants to be an authentic expression of the Chinese soul, which he can find in the Christian faith the respect for his noble traditions and the fullness of his deep spiritual aspirations.

What then would we want? We say it simply: resume contacts, as we already maintain them with that portion of the Chinese people with whom we have friendly relations. Indeed, we must recognize that among the many Chinese residing outside the continental state, the Catholic Church is pleased to include, in the Far East and in every part of the world, many excellent and faithful children, and fervent and thriving communities, well assisted by Chinese Bishops and Clergy. Chinese; the Chinese students present at this rite, like the other Chinese Catholics, who also attend it, are for us a dear sign of the persistent vitality of the Chinese Church and are a source of great comfort and great hope.

However, we would now like to resume contact with the Chinese people of the continent; contacts not interrupted voluntarily by Us, to tell all those Chinese Catholics, who have remained faithful to the Catholic Church, that We have never forgotten them, and that we will never give up the hope of rebirth, indeed of the development of the Catholic religion in that Nation. Reconnect to let the Chinese youth know with what trepidation and affection We consider your present exaltation towards the ideals of a new, industrious, prosperous and concordant life. And we would also like to discuss peace with those who preside over Chinese life today on the Continent, knowing how this supreme human and civil ideal is intimately congenial with the spirit of the Chinese people.

These are Our wishes, Our vows. But we know the difficulties of the present hour. However, they do not prevent us from making Our thoughts for China particularly vigilant, loving and caring. And that's what we're doing. If anything, it is practically not given to us to do this, not only is it allowed to us, but it is more strongly imposed on us: to remember and pray. This is what we are doing: we remember and pray. This is why we are gathered here to commemorate two facts in the religious history of China, which seem symbolic and decisive to us. And all present We invite, indeed all those who are in communion with Us, to remember and pray. ("Homily" of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI, January 6, 1967.)

Montini/Paul VI made it clear that he did not consider the Communist regime of Red China to be illegitimate and welcomed the opportunity to establish “friendly” relations in the name of “peace.” However, the only kind of “peace” that Communists desire is total capitulation to whatever they want at any given time. As I told my students during my college teaching days, “The Soviets say they want peace, which is true. They want a piece of Virginia, a piece of New York, a piece of California, etc.” Peace for Communist regimes means total surrender.

Contrast Montini/Paul VI’s with Pope Pius XI’s absolute ban of cooperating with Communist regimes, a prohibition that was reaffirmed by the Holy Office in 1949 under Pope Pius XII:

See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

This Sacred Supreme Congregation has been asked:  

1. whether it is lawful to join Communist Parties or to favour them;
2. whether it is lawful to publish, disseminate, or read books, periodicals, newspapers or leaflets which support the teaching or action of Communists, or to write in them;
3. whether the faithful who knowingly and freely perform the acts specified in questions 1 and 2 may be admitted to the Sacraments;
4. whether the faithful who profess the materialistic and anti-Christian doctrine of the Communists, and particularly those who defend or propagate this doctrine, contract ipso facto excommunication specially reserved to the Apostolic See as apostates from the Catholic faith.

The Most Eminent and Most Reverend Fathers entrusted with the supervision of matters concerning the safeguarding of Faith and morals, having previously heard the opinion of the Reverend Lords Consultors, decreed in the plenary session held on Tuesday (instead of Wednesday), June 28, 1949, that the answers should be as follows:

To 1. in the negative: because Communism is materialistic and anti-Christian; and the leaders of the Communists, although they sometimes profess in words that they do not oppose religion, do in fact show themselves, both in their teaching and in their actions, to be the enemies of God, of the true religion and of the Church of Christ; to 2. in the negative: they are prohibited ipso iure (cf. Can. 1399 of the Codex Iuris Canonici); to 3. in the negative, in accordance with the ordinary principles concerning the refusal of the Sacraments to those who are not disposed; to 4. in the affirmative.

And the following Thursday, on the 30th day of the same month and year, Our Most Holy Lord Pius XII, Pope by the Divine Providence, in the ordinary audience, granted to the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Assessor of the Sacred Office, approved of the decision of the Most Eminent Fathers which had been reported to Him, and ordered the same to be promulgated officially in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

Given at Rome, on July 1st, 1949. (As found at Decree Against Communism.)

Pope Pius XII issued his last encyclical letter, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, to condemn what Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio have never condemned, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association:

8. In these days, however, We have to draw attention to the fact that the Church in your lands in recent years has been brought to still worse straits. In the midst of so many great sorrows it brings Us great comfort to note that in the daily attacks which you have met neither unflinching faith nor the most ardent love of the Divine Redeemer and of His Church has been wanting. You have borne witness to this faith and love in innumerable ways, of which only a small part is known to men, but for all of which you will someday receive an eternal reward from God.

9. Nevertheless We regard it as Our duty to declare openly, with a heart filled to its depths with sorrow and anxiety, that affairs in China are, by deceit and cunning endeavor, changing so much for the worse that the false doctrine already condemned by Us seems to be approaching its final stages and to be causing its most serious damage.

10. For by particularly subtle activity an association has been created among you to which has been attached the title of "patriotic," and Catholics are being forced by every means to take part in it. This association - as has often been proclaimed - was formed ostensibly to join the clergy and the faithful in love of their religion and their country, with these objectives in view: that they might foster patriotic sentiments; that they might advance the cause of international peace; that they might accept that species of socialism which has been introduced among you and, having accepted it, support and spread it; that, finally, they might actively cooperate with civil authorities in defending what they describe as political and religious freedom. And yet - despite these sweeping generalizations about defense of peace and the fatherland, which can certainly deceive the unsuspecting - it is perfectly clear that this association is simply an attempt to execute certain well defined and ruinous policies.

11. For under an appearance of patriotism, which in reality is just a fraud, this association aims primarily at making Catholics gradually embrace the tenets of atheistic materialism, by which God Himself is denied and religious principles are rejected.

12. Under the guise of defending peace the same association receives and spreads false rumors and accusations by which many of the clergy, including venerable bishops and even the Holy See itself, are claimed to admit to and promote schemes for earthly domination or to give ready and willing consent to exploitation of the people, as if they, with preconceived opinions, are acting with hostile intent against the Chinese nation.

13. While they declare that it is essential that every kind of freedom exist in religious matters and that this makes mutual relations between the ecclesiastical and civil powers easier, this association in reality aims at setting aside and neglecting the rights of the Church and effecting its complete subjection to civil authorities.

14. Hence all its members are forced to approve those unjust prescriptions by which missionaries are cast into exile, and by which bishops, priests, religious men, nuns, and the faithful in considerable numbers are thrust into prison; to consent to those measures by which the jurisdiction of many legitimate pastors is persistently obstructed; to defend wicked principles totally opposed to the unity, universality, and hierarchical constitution of the Church; to admit those first steps by which the clergy and faithful are undermined in the obedience due to legitimate bishops; and to separate Catholic communities from the Apostolic See.

15. In order to spread these wicked principles more efficiently and to fix them in everyone's mind, this association - which, as We have said, boasts of its patriotism - uses a variety of means including violence and oppression, numerous lengthy publications, and group meetings and congresses.

16. In these meetings, the unwilling are forced to take part by incitement, threats, and deceit. If any bold spirit strives to defend truth, his voice is easily smothered and overcome and he is branded with a mark of infamy as an enemy of his native land and of the new society.

17. There should also be noted those courses of instruction by which pupils are forced to imbibe and embrace this false doctrine. Priests, religious men and women, ecclesiastical students, and faithful of all ages are forced to attend these courses. An almost endless series of lectures and discussions, lasting for weeks and months, so weaken and benumb the strength of mind and will that by a kind of psychic coercion an assent is extracted which contains almost no human element, an assent which is not freely asked for as should be the case.

18. In addition to these there are the methods by which minds are upset - by every device, in private and in public, by traps, deceits, grave fear, by so-called forced confessions, by custody in a place where citizens are forcibly "reeducated," and those "Peoples' Courts" to which even venerable bishops are ignominiously dragged for trial.

19. Against methods of acting such as these, which violate the principal rights of the human person and trample on the sacred liberty of the sons of God, all Christians from every part of the world, indeed all men of good sense cannot refrain from raising their voices with Us in real horror and from uttering a protest deploring the deranged conscience of their fellow men. (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958.)

The conciliar revolutionaries have not ignored these truths, they have actively sought to disparage them by always seeking a “reconciliation” with the enemies of Christ the King and His true Church—and thus the enemies of human salvation—on the enemies’ terms. Always. Unfailingly. This total capitulation to the enemies characterizes false ecumenism as one concession after another is made to Protestant sects and to various schismatic and heretical Orthodox churches, and it particularly characterizes conciliarism’s relations with Talmudists. The lords of conciliarism are only too willing to deny Christ the King before men after having denied his Social Reign over men and their nations both in theory and in practice, and they are ever so eager to avoid “offending” Jews, Mohammedans, Jainists, Taoists, Shintoists, Animists, Buddhists, Hindus, Yazidis, Theosophists and outright atheists by hiding Christian symbolism when in their presence and speaking in Judeo-Masonic terms about “God” while also esteeming their symbols of idolatry and terming their places of devil worship” as “sacred” and “holy.”

Pope Pius XII urged the suffering Catholics in Red China to maintain the Holy Faith unblemished, and what he wrote to them fifty-eight years ago applies to us now. We must maintain the Holy Faith unblemished and without making any compromise with the nonexistent legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his false religious sect, the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Pope Pius XII was equally firm in his denunciations of Communist aggression against Catholics in Eastern Europe in 1956 during the uprisings again that took place in Poland and Hungary in 1956, writing the following in the immediate aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution's liberation of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty in late-October of 1956:

We are most pleased to learn that the Consecrated Shepherds of the Catholic world and the rest of the clergy and faithful have responded with generosity and enthusiasm to the paternal entreaty of Our recent Encyclical Letter by supplicating Heaven in public prayers. And so We give unceasing thanks to God from Our heart that He has heard so many prayers, especially of innocent boys and girls, and a new dawn of peace based on justice seems to be breaking at long last for the people of Poland and Hungary.

2. With no less joy have We learned that Our beloved sons, Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, Stefan Wyszynski, Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, and Jozef Mindszenty, Archbishop of Esztergom, who had both been expelled from their Sees, are acknowledged to be innocent men, unjustly accused of crime, and as such have already been restored to their positions of honor and responsibility and welcomed in triumph by rejoicing multitudes.

3. We are confident that this event will prove a happy omen for the restoration and pacification of these two countries on a basis of sounder principle and nobler law, and, above all, with proper respect for God's rights and those of His Church.

4. Wherefore We call again and again upon all the Catholics of those countries to unite themselves about their lawful shepherds with massed force and drawn ranks, and thus apply themselves diligently to the advancement and strengthening of this holy cause. For it is a cause which cannot be abandoned or neglected without making true peace an impossibility.

5. But even while Our heart still fears on this account, We behold the threat of another frightening crisis. As you know, Venerable Brothers, the flames of another war are being fanned menacingly in the Near East, not far from that holy land where angels descended from Heaven and hovered over the crib of the Divine Child, announcing peace to men of good will. (Luke 2. 14).

6. What else can We do, who embrace all peoples with a father's affection, but raise suppliant prayers to the Father of Mercies and God of all comfort (cfr. 11 Cor. 1. 3), and urge all of you to join in them with Us? For "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but powerful before God." (11 Cor. 10. 4)

7. We trust solely in Him Who can illuminate the minds of men with His heavenly light and incline their incited wills to those more temperate counsels by which right order among nations may be established, to their common advantage and with certainty that the legitimate rights of all interested parties are being secured.

8. May all men, especially those who hold the destinies of nations in their hands, remember that war brings no lasting benefit, but a host of misfortunes and disasters. Differences among men are not resolved by arms, bloodshed, or destruction, but only by reason, law, prudence, and justice.

9. When wise men who are motivated by a desire for lasting peace meet to discuss such differences, they should certainly feel obliged to enter upon the ways of justice rather than the rash road of violence if they reflect upon the grave dangers of a war which may start as a tiny spark, but can burst into an enormous conflagration.

10. Amidst these dangerous crises We wish especially to convince the heads of governments. We cannot possibly doubt their realization that no other interest motivates Us but the common good and prosperity of all, which can never be achieved by the massacre of one's brothers. 

11. And since, as We have said, We place Our hope above all in the providence and mercy of God. We repeatedly, urge you, Venerable Brothers, not to cease encouraging and promoting this zealous crusade of prayer. Through it -- with the intercession of His Mother, the Virgin Mary -- may Almighty God in His goodness grant an end to the threat of war, a happy solution to the conflicting claims of nations, and assurance everywhere, to the common benefit of all, of those rights granted the Church by her Divine Founder. Thus may "the whole human family, which has been rent asunder by sin's wound, be brought under the sway of His most sweet rule." (Prayer for the Feast of Christ the King) (Pope Pius XII, Laetamur Admodum, November 1, 1956.)

Although his joy was quickly turned into sorrow following the Soviet invasion of Hungary after he issued Laetamar Admodum, Pope Pius XII was truly relieved that two imprisoned bishops, Stefan Wyszynski, Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and the Primate of Poland, and Jozef Mindszenty, the Primate of Hungary had been returned to their sees. Bergoglio is now accepting rump "bishops" as legitimate governors of Catholic sees in Red China, which makes perfect sense if one understands the fact that he thinks that Justin Welby is truly the "archbishop of Canterbury." A true pope, Pope Pius XII, gave no quarter to falsity. A false "pope" embraces falsity with enthusiasm as he believes that the only thing that is "false" is "old-fashioned" Catholicism.

It was only four days afer he issued Laetamar Admodum that Pope Pius XII forcefully condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary that resulted in Cardinal Mindszenty’s taking refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest for the next decade prior to his betrayal at the hands of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul the Sick:

Venerable Brethren, Greetings and Apostolic Benediction.

In the Encyclical Letter which We recently wrote you, Consecrated Shepherds of the Catholic world, We expressed Our hope that a new day of peace based on justice and liberty might be dawning upon the noble people of Hungary. For conditions in that country seemed to be improving.

2. But tidings have reached Us lately which fill Our heart with pain and sorrow. There is being shed again in the cities, towns, and villages of Hungary the blood of citizens who long with all their hearts for their rightful freedom. National institutions which had just been restored have been overthrown again and violently destroyed. A blood-drenched people have been reduced once more to slavery by the armed might of foreigners.

3. We cannot help but deplore and condemn (for so Our consciousness of Our office bids Us) these unhappy events which fill all Catholics and all free peoples with deepest sorrow and indignation. May those whose commands have caused these tragic events come to realize that the rightful freedom of a people cannot be extinguished by the shedding of human blood..

4. We who watch over all peoples with a father's concern assert that any violence and any bloodshed which anyone unjustly causes is never to be tolerated. On the contrary, We exhort all people and all classes of society to that peace which finds its basis and nurture in justice, liberty, and love.

5. The words which "the Lord said to Cain. . . 'The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth'," (Gen. 4, 10) are relevant today. For so the blood of the Hungarian people cries out to God. And even though God often punishes private individuals for their sins only after death, nonetheless, as history teaches, He occasionally punishes in this mortal life rulers of people and their nations when they have dealt unjustly with others. For He is a just judge.

6. May our merciful Redeemer, We suppliantly pray, move the hearts of those upon whose decisions these matters depend, that an end may be put to injustice and a finish to violence, that all nations, being at peace with one another, may be united in peaceful and tranquil harmony.

7. Meanwhile, We implore a most merciful God on behalf especially of all those who have been tragically slain in the course of these unhappy events. May they find eternal life and unending peace in heaven. We desire that all Christians join Us in praying to God for them.

8. And as We address these words to you, We lovingly impart Our Apostolic Benediction to each and every one of you, Venerable Brethren, and to your flocks, and in a very special way to Our beloved Hungarian people. May it be a pledge of heavenly graces and a witness to Our paternal love. (Pope Pius XII, Datis Nuperimme, November 5, 1956.)

No, true popes never speak like leftists. True popes speak as Catholics, and there has not been a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter, since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.

Bookended by Two Encyclical Letters

Pope Pius XII’s opposed the evils of the day at the beginning of his pontificate in 1939 and as he neared his death nineteen years later.

His Holiness’s first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 20, 1939, discussed world events during the onset of World War II in light of the Holy Faith and it sought to assure Catholics of Christ the King’s beneficent care for them at all times but especially in those when they are asked to bear heavy crosses, which he said should be the impetus for a greater vigilance and a more determined resistance to the enemies of the Holy Faith:

7. Who among “the Soldiers of Christ” — ecclesiastic or layman — does not feel himself incited and spurred on to a greater vigilance, to a more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ’s enemies; as he perceives the spokesmen of these tendencies deny or in practice neglect the vivifying truths and the values inherent in belief in God and in Christ; as he perceives them wantonly break the Tables of God’s Commandments to substitute other tables and other standards stripped of the ethical content of the Revelation on Sinai, standards in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no place? (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 20, 1939.)

Interjection:

This description of how both the leaders of Nazism and Bolshevism were attacking the truths of the Faith in order to substitute their own utopian fantasies place of everything contained within the Sacred Deposit of Faith, including the Ten Commandments, that reduce men to the point of state servitude is more relevant now in the so-called “civilized” West than it was even eighty-three years ago.

His Holiness went on to emphasize his own commitment to Christ the King and to His Most Sacred Heart that were the keynotes of Pope Pius XI’s pontificate that immediately preceded his own:

8. Who could observe without profound grief the tragic harvest of such desertions among those who in days of calm and security were numbered among the followers of Christ, but who — Christians unfortunately more in name than in fact — in the hour that called for endurance, for effort, for suffering, for a stout heart in face of hidden or open persecution, fell victims of cowardice, weakness, uncertainty; who, terror-stricken before the sacrifices entailed by a profession of their Christian Faith, could not steel themselves to drink the bitter chalice awaiting those faithful to Christ?

9. In such dispositions of time and temperament, Venerable Brethren, may the approaching Feast of Christ the King, on which this, Our first Encyclical, will reach you, be a day of grace and of thorough renewal and revival in the spirit of the Kingdom of Christ. May it be a day when the consecration of the human race to the Divine Heart, which should be celebrated in a particularly solemn manner, will gather the Faithful of all peoples and all nations around the throne of the Eternal King, in adoration and in reparation, to renew now and forever their oath of allegiance to Him and to His law of truth and of love.

10. May it be for the Faithful a day of grace, on which the fire that Our Lord came to cast upon the earth will kindle with ever greater light and purity. May it be a day of grace for the lukewarm, for the weary, for the afflicted, that their heads, which have become faint, may give proofs of interior renewal and regeneration of spirit. May it be a day of grace also for those who have not known Christ or who have lost Him; a day when from millions of faithful hearts will rise to Heaven the prayer that “the Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (Saint John i. 9) may make clear to them the way of salvation, that His grace may stir in the “troubled heart” of the wanderers a homesickness for things eternal, a homesickness that impels them to return to Him, Who from His sorrowful throne of the Cross thirsts for their souls also and Who is consumed by a desire to become for them, too, “the Way, and the Truth and the Life” (Saint John xiv. 6).

11. As, with a heart full of confidence and hope, We place this first Encyclical of Our Pontificate under the Seal of Christ the King, We feel entirely assured of the unanimous and enthusiastic approval of the whole flock of Christ. The difficulties, anxieties and trials of the present hour arouse, intensify and refine, to a degree rarely attained, the sense of solidarity in the Catholic family. They make all believers in God and in Christ share the consciousness of a common threat from a common danger. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 20, 1939.)

Interjection:

Like Pope Pius XI before him, who had instituted the Feast of Christ the King when he issued Quas Primas on December 11, 1922, Pope Pius XII urged Catholics to make good use of a liturgical feast that was designed to remind them of the Sovereignty of Our Divine Redeemer over all men, including the potentates of the world who were threatening the very life of Holy Mother Church and engaged in a fearsome series of attacks upon Catholics. This exhortation included a not-so-subtle condemnation of both the Nazis and Soviets when His Holiness noted that the “difficulties, anxieties and trials of the present hour arouse, intensify and refine, to a degree rarely attained, the sense of solidarity in the Catholic family” because they shared “the consciousness of a common threat from a common danger.

Pope Pius XII also spoke of the how the errors of Modernity, including those of Protestantism, created a world of amorality where people no longer see each in each other the Divine impress and are thus prone to dehumanize others on grounds of racial, philosophical, political, and/or ideological differences. The Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God instituted to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church was the proximate cause by which darkness had descended upon the world when Pope Pius XII issued Summi Pontificatus. Untethered from their mater and magister, Holy Mother Church, fallen men, devoid of Sanctifying Grace, must return to states of barbarism to such an extent that they come to dehumanize those who disagree with them.

Pope Pius XII made this clear in the following passages of Summi Pontifactus as he stated clearly that men must become the slaves of error once they dethrone Christ the King and put themselves and their falsehoods in His place and that of Holy Mother Church. The Protestant Revolution’s dethroning of Christ the King led directly to atheism and to the dehumanization of those who dare to hold fast to the truths of the Holy Faith:

21. At the head of the road which leads to the spiritual and moral bankruptcy of the present day stand the nefarious efforts of not a few to dethrone Christ; the abandonment of the law of truth which He proclaimed and of the law of love which is the life breath of His Kingdom.

22. In the recognition of the royal prerogatives of Christ and in the return of individuals and of society to the law of His truth and of His love lies the only way to salvation.

23. Venerable Brethren, as We write these lines the terrible news comes to Us that the dread tempest of war is already raging despite all Our efforts to avert it. When We think of the wave of suffering that has come on countless people who but yesterday enjoyed in the environment of their homes some little degree of well-being, We are tempted to lay down Our pen. Our paternal heart is torn by anguish as We look ahead to all that will yet come forth from the baneful seed of violence and of hatred for which the sword today ploughs the blood-drenched furrow.

24. But precisely because of this apocalyptic foresight of disaster, imminent and remote, We feel We have a duty to raise with still greater insistence the eyes and hearts of those in whom there yet remains good will to the One from Whom alone comes the salvation of the world — to One Whose almighty and merciful Hand can alone calm this tempest — to the One Whose truth and Whose love can enlighten the intellects and inflame the hearts of so great a section of mankind plunged in error, selfishness, strife and struggle, so as to give it a new orientation in the spirit of the Kingship of Christ.

25. Perhaps — God grant it — one may hope that this hour of direct need may bring a change of outlook and sentiment to those many who, till now, have walked with blind faith along the path of popular modern errors unconscious of the treacherous and insecure ground on which they trod. Perhaps the many who have not grasped the importance of the educational and pastoral mission of the Church will now understand better her warnings, scouted in the false security of the past. No defense of Christianity could be more effective than the present straits. From the immense vortex of error and anti-Christian movements there has come forth a crop of such poignant disasters as to constitute a condemnation surpassing in its conclusiveness any merely theoretical refutation.

26. Hours of painful disillusionment are often hours of grace — “a passage of the Lord” (cf. Exodus xii. 11), when doors which in other circumstances would have remained shut, open at Our Savior’s words: “Behold, I stand at the gate and knock” (Apocalypse iii. 20). God knows that Our heart goes out in affectionate sympathy and spiritual joy to those who, as a result of such painful trials, feel within them an effective and salutary thirst for the truth, justice and peace of Christ. But for those also for whom as yet the hour of light from on high has not come, Our heart knows only love, Our lips move only in prayer to the Father of Light that He may cause to shine in their hearts, indifferent as yet or hostile to Christ, a ray of that Light which once transformed Saul into Paul; of that Light which has shown its mysterious power strongest in the times of greatest difficulty for the Church.

27. A full statement of the doctrinal stand to be taken in face of the errors of today, if necessary, can be put off to another time unless there is disturbance by calamitous external events; for the moment We limit Ourselves to some fundamental observations.

28. The present age, Venerable Brethren, by adding new errors to the doctrinal aberrations of the past, has pushed these to extremes which lead inevitably to a drift towards chaos. Before all else, it is certain that the radical and ultimate cause of the evils which We deplore in modern society is the denial and rejection of a universal norm of morality as well for individual and social life as for international relations; We mean the disregard, so common nowadays, and the forgetfulness of the natural law itself, which has its foundation in God, Almighty Creator and Father of all, supreme and absolute Lawgiver, all-wise and just Judge of human actions. When God is hated, every basis of morality is undermined; the voice of conscience is stilled or at any rate grows very faint, that voice which teaches even to the illiterate and to uncivilized tribes what is good and what is bad, what lawful, what forbidden, and makes men feel themselves responsible for their actions to a Supreme Judge.

29. The denial of the fundamentals of morality had its origin, in Europe, in the abandonment of that Christian teaching of which the Chair of Peter is the depository and exponent. That teaching had once given spiritual cohesion to a Europe which, educated, ennobled and civilized by the Cross, had reached such a degree of civil progress as to become the teacher of other peoples, of other continents. But, cut off from the infallible teaching authority of the Church, not a few separated brethren have gone so far as to overthrow the central dogma of Christianity, the Divinity of the Savior, and have hastened thereby the progress of spiritual decay.

30. The Holy Gospel narrates that when Jesus was crucified “there was darkness over the whole earth” (Matthew xxvii. 45); a terrifying symbol of what happened and what still happens spiritually wherever incredulity, blind and proud of itself, has succeeded in excluding Christ from modern life, especially from public life, and has undermined faith in God as well as faith in Christ. The consequence is that the moral values by which in other times public and private conduct was gauged have fallen into disuse; and the much vaunted civilization of society, which has made ever more rapid progress, withdrawing man, the family and the State from the beneficent and regenerating effects of the idea of God and the teaching of the Church, has caused to reappear, in regions in which for many centuries shone the splendors of Christian civilization, in a manner ever clearer, ever more distinct, ever more distressing, the signs of a corrupt and corrupting paganism: “There was darkness when they crucified Jesus” (Roman Breviary, Good Friday, Response Five).

31. Many perhaps, while abandoning the teaching of Christ, were not fully conscious of being led astray by a mirage of glittering phrases, which proclaimed such estrangement as an escape from the slavery in which they were before held; nor did they then foresee the bitter consequences of bartering the truth that sets free, for error which enslaves. They did not realize that, in renouncing the infinitely wise and paternal laws of God, and the unifying and elevating doctrines of Christ’s love, they were resigning themselves to the whim of a poor, fickle human wisdom; they spoke of progress, when they were going back; of being raised, when they groveled; of arriving at man’s estate, when they stooped to servility. They did not perceive the inability of all human effort to replace the law of Christ by anything equal to it; “they became vain in their thoughts” (Romans i. 21).

32. With the weakening of faith in God and in Jesus Christ, and the darkening in men’s minds of the light of moral principles, there disappeared the indispensable foundation of the stability and quiet of that internal and external, private and public order, which alone can support and safeguard the prosperity of States. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 20, 1939.)

Interjection:

This is very similar to what Pope Leo XIII wrote in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, and in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:

23. 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. . . .

 

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

32. So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

 

 God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is “the Life,” just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word “all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made.” This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ’s mercy, that is to say, “the life of grace,” whose happy consummation is “the life of glory,” to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that “we being dead to sin, should live to justice” (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. “The just man liveth by faith” (Galatians iii., II). “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. 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.)

Popes Leo XIII and Pius XII accurately described the state of the world at the time they issued their respective encyclical letters, but they also prophetically predicted the plight of the world in which we live long after their deaths. The teleology of error is such that men who formed in the crucible of error and nourished by hatred throughout their lives will seek to eradicate all notion of even natural, no less supernatural, truth, from the minds of men and to make war upon those who explain that the only unifying force on the face of this earth is Catholicism. Nothing else.

Pope Pius XII noted that, fallen human nature being what it is, there were certainly divisions, wars, and ruin during the thousand-year epoch of Christendom in Europe. However, His Holiness noted that there had never been a time of hatred such as existed in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II. Catholics in the Middle Ages had belief in and access to the Sacraments. They sinned but they went to Confession and tried to amend their lives. They adored the Most Blessed Sacrament and were devoted to the Mother of God. They saw in each other the Divine impress. They did not live in the darkness of modern times, a darkness produced by the adversary’s own anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity:

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

34. Among the many errors which derive from the poisoned source of religious and moral agnosticism, We would draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to two in particular, as being those which more than others render almost impossible or at least precarious and uncertain, the peaceful intercourse of peoples.

35. The first of these pernicious errors, widespread today, is the forgetfulness of that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to whatever people they belong, and by the redeeming Sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ on the Altar of the Cross to His Heavenly Father on behalf of sinful mankind.

36. In fact, the first page of the Scripture, with magnificent simplicity, tells us how God, as a culmination to His creative work, made man to His Own image and likeness (cf. Genesis i. 26, 27); and the same Scripture tells us that He enriched man with supernatural gifts and privileges, and destined him to an eternal and ineffable happiness. It shows us besides how other men took their origin from the first couple, and then goes on, in unsurpassed vividness of language, to recount their division into different groups and their dispersion to various parts of the world. Even when they abandoned their Creator, God did not cease to regard them as His children, who, according to His merciful plan, should one day be reunited once more in His friendship (cf. Genesis xii. 3).

37. The Apostle of the Gentiles later on makes himself the herald of this truth which associates men as brothers in one great family, when he proclaims to the Greek world that God “hath made of one, all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the limits of their habitation, that they should seek God” (Acts xvii. 26, 27).

38. A marvelous vision, which makes us see the human race in the unity of one common origin in God “one God and Father of all, Who is above all, and through all, and in us all” (Ephesians iv. 6); in the unity of nature which in every man is equally composed of material body and spiritual, immortal soul; in the unity of the immediate end and mission in the world; in the unity of dwelling place, the earth, of whose resources all men can by natural right avail themselves, to sustain and develop life; in the unity of the supernatural end, God Himself, to Whom all should tend; in the unity of means to secure that end.

39. It is the same Apostle who portrays for us mankind in the unity of its relations with the Son of God, image of the invisible God, in Whom all things have been created: “In Him were all things created” (Colossians i. 16); in the unity of its ransom, effected for all by Christ, Who, through His Holy and most bitter passion, restored the original friendship with God which had been broken, making Himself the Mediator between God and men: “For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (I Timothy ii. 5).

40. And to render such friendship between God and mankind more intimate, this same Divine and universal Mediator of salvation and of peace, in the sacred silence of the Supper Room, before He consummated the Supreme Sacrifice, let fall from His divine Lips the words which reverberate mightily down the centuries, inspiring heroic charity in a world devoid of love and torn by hate: “This is my commandment that you love one another, as I have loved you” (Saint John xv. 12).

41. These are supernatural truths which form a solid basis and the strongest possible bond of a union, that is reinforced by the love of God and of our Divine Redeemer, from Whom all receive salvation “for the edifying of the Body of Christ: until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians iv. 12, 13).

42. In the light of this unity of all mankind, which exists in law and in fact, individuals do not feel themselves isolated units, like grains of sand, but united by the very force of their nature and by their internal destiny, into an organic, harmonious mutual relationship which varies with the changing of times.

43. And the nations, despite a difference of development due to diverse conditions of life and of culture, are not destined to break the unity of the human race, but rather to enrich and embellish it by the sharing of their own peculiar gifts and by that reciprocal interchange of goods which can be possible and efficacious only when a mutual love and a lively sense of charity unite all the sons of the same Father and all those redeemed by the same Divine Blood.

44. The Church of Christ, the faithful depository of the teaching of Divine Wisdom, cannot and does not think of deprecating or disdaining the particular characteristics which each people, with jealous and intelligible pride, cherishes and retains as a precious heritage. Her aim is a supernatural union in all-embracing love, deeply felt and practiced, and not the unity which is exclusively external and superficial and by that very fact weak.

45. The Church hails with joy and follows with her maternal blessing every method of guidance and care which aims at a wise and orderly evolution of particular forces and tendencies having their origin in the individual character of each race, provided that they are not opposed to the duties incumbent on men from their unity of origin and common destiny. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 20, 1939.)

Interjection:

This dehumanization is the cornerstone of all anti-Theistic political movements, starting with the French Revolution, and it was especially the foundation of both Nazism and Bolshevism. It is also the cornerstone of the programs of the utilitarian social Darwinists who spawned the eugenics movement in the late Nineteenth Century, the Sangerite program of “more from the fit, less from the unfit,” including state-mandated sterilization, the work of the Rockefeller Foundation and its Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the social engineers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society, and the so-called “woke movement” at this time.

To refuse to see the Divine impress in others is the sure path to violence, and it is no accident that the systematic efforts on the part of so-called educators, politicians, entertainers, entertainment producers, authors, journalists, commentators, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and professional victimologists to castigate their opponents and then to justify violent attacks upon them has manifested itself with particular vengeance since the decriminalization of the surgical execution of the innocent preborn. The dehumanization of innocent babies has led logically to the dehumanization of anyone considered to be “unwanted,” “useless,” “hateful,” or “bigoted” because they dissent from the “received teaching” of those who adhere to the latest currents that hold sway in the gutters within the ever-evolving naturalist precepts of the false opposite of the naturalist “left.”

Pope Pius XII explained that is only the Catholic Faith that infallibly guides and sanctifies men, and he was careful to express his solicitude for Catholic Poland, which was being partitioned by both the Nazis and the Soviets at the time Summi Pontificatus was issued:

99. These last are recognizing in the Catholic Church principles of belief and life that have stood the test of 2,000 years; the strong cohesion of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which in union with the Successor of Peter spends itself in enlightening minds with the teaching of the Gospel, in guiding and sanctifying men, and which is generous in its material condescension towards all, but firm when, even at the cost of torments or martyrdom, it has to say: “Non licet; it is not allowed!”

100. And yet, Venerable Brethren, the teaching of Christ, which alone can furnish man with such solid bases of belief as will greatly enlarge his vision, and divinely dilate his heart and supply an efficacious remedy to the very grave difficulties of today — this and the activity of the Church in teaching and spreading that Doctrine, and in forming and modeling men’s minds by its precepts, are at times an object of suspicion, as if they shook the foundations of civil authority or usurped its rights.

101. Against such suspicions We solemnly declare with Apostolic sincerity that — without prejudice to the declarations regarding the power of Christ and of His Church made by Our predecessor, Pius XI, of venerable memory, in his Encyclical Quas Primas of December 11, 1925 — any such aims are entirely alien to that same Church, which spreads it maternal arms towards this world not to dominate but to serve. She does not claim to take the place of other legitimate authorities in their proper spheres, but offers them her help after the example and in the spirit of her Divine Founder Who “went about doing good” (Acts x. 38).

102. The Church preaches and inculcates obedience and respect for earthly authority which derives from God its whole origin and holds to the teaching of her Divine Master Who said: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Saint Matthew xxii. 21); she has no desire to usurp, and sings in the liturgy: “He takes away no earthly realms who gives us the celestial” (hymn for Feast of Epiphany). She does not suppress human energies but lifts them up to all that is noble and generous and forms characters which do not compromise with conscience. Nor has she who civilizes the nations ever retarded the civil progress of mankind, at which on the contrary she is pleased and glad with a mother’s pride. The end of her activity was admirably expressed by the Angels over the cradle of the Word Incarnate, when they sang of glory to God and announced peace to men of good will: “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will” (Saint Luke ii. 14).

103. This peace, which the world cannot give, has been left as a heritage to His disciples by the Divine Redeemer Himself: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you” (Saint John xiv. 27); and thus following the sublime teaching of Christ, summed up by Himself in the twofold precept of love of God and of the neighbor, millions of souls have reached, are reaching and shall reach peace. History, wisely called by a great Roman “The Teacher of Life,” has proved for close on two thousand years how true is the word of Scripture that he will not have peace who resists God (cf. Job ix. 4). For Christ alone is the “Corner Stone” (Ephesians ii. 20) on which man and society can find stability and salvation.

104. On this Corner Stone the Church is built, and hence against her the adversary can never prevail: “The gates of hell shall not prevail” (Saint Matthew xvi. 18), nor can they ever weaken her! Nay, rather, internal and external struggles tend to augment the force and multiply the laurels of her glorious victories.

105. On the other hand, any other building which has not been founded solidly on the teaching of Christ rests on shifting sands and is destined to perish miserably (cf. Saint Matthew vii. 26, 27).

106. Venerable Brethren, the hour when this Our first Encyclical reaches you is in many respects a real “Hour of Darkness” (cf. Saint Luke xxii. 53), in which the spirit of violence and of discord brings indescribable suffering on mankind. Do We need to give assurance that Our paternal heart is close to all Our children in compassionate love, and especially to the afflicted, the oppressed, the persecuted? The nations swept into the tragic whirlpool of war are perhaps as yet only at the “beginnings of sorrows” (Saint Matthew xxiv. 8), but even now there reigns in thousands of families death and desolation, lamentation and misery. The blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, which, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization, written in indelible characters in the annals of history, has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits, relying on the powerful intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace.

107. What has already happened and is still happening, was presented, as it were, in a vision before Our eyes when, while still some hope was left, We left nothing undone in the form suggested to us by Our Apostolic office and by the means at Our disposal, to prevent recourse to arms and to keep open the way to an understanding honorable to both parties. Convinced that the use of force on one side would be answered by recourse to arms on the other, We considered it a duty inseparable from Our Apostolic office and of Christian Charity to try every means to spare mankind and Christianity the horrors of a world conflagration, even at the risk of having Our intentions and Our aims misunderstood. Our advice, if heard with respect, was not however followed and while Our pastoral heart looks on with sorrow and foreboding, the Image of the Good Shepherd comes up before Our gaze, and it seems as though We ought to repeat to the world in His name: “If thou . . . hadst known . . . the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes” (Saint Luke xix. 42).

108. In the midst of this world which today presents such a sharp contrast to “The Peace of Christ in the Reign of Christ,” the Church and her faithful are in times and in years of trial such as have rarely been known in her history of struggle and suffering. But in such times especially, he who remains firm in his faith and strong at heart knows that Christ the King is never so near as in the hour of trial, which is the hour for fidelity. With a heart torn by the sufferings and afflictions of so many of her sons, but with the courage and the stability that come from the promises of Our Lord, the Spouse of Christ goes to meet the gathering storms. This she knows, that the truth which she preaches, the charity which she teaches and practices, will be the indispensable counselors and aids to men of good will in the reconstruction of a new world based on justice and love, when mankind, weary from its course along the way of error, has tasted the bitter fruits of hate and violence.

109. In the meantime however, Venerable Brethren, the world and all those who are stricken by the calamity of the war must know that the obligation of Christian love, the very foundation of the Kingdom of Christ, is not an empty word, but a living reality. A vast field opens up for Christian Charity in all its forms. We have full confidence that all Our sons, especially those who are not being tried by the scourge of war, will be mindful in imitation of the Divine Samaritan, of all these who, as victims of the war, have a right to compassion and help.

110. The “Catholic Church, the City of God, whose King is Truth, whose law love and whose measure eternity” (Saint Augustine, Ep. CXXXVIII. Ad Marcellinum, C. 3, N. 17), preaching fearlessly the whole truth of Christ and toiling as the love of Christ demands with the zeal of a mother, stands as a blessed vision of peace above the storm of error and passion awaiting the moment when the all-powerful Hand of Christ the King shall quiet the tempest and banish the spirits of discord which have provoked it. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 20, 1939.)

Interjection:

The Lateran Concordat of 1929 may have pledged the Holy See to neutrality in international conflicts. However, this did not stop Pope Pius XII from defending the honor of Catholic Poland as it was being partitioned, occupied and terrorized by twin, related forces of evil German National Socialism and Russian Marxist-Leninism while reminding Catholics that Holy Mother church stans “above the storm of error and passion” as Holy Mother Church awaits “the moment when the all-powerful Hand of Christ the King shall quiet the tempest and banish the spirits of discord which have provoked it,” an exhortation that applies to the storm of errors in the world and in the counterfeit church of conciliarism that are besieging us in these our troubled times.

Summi Pontificatus during the first year of Pope Pius XII’s pontificate. It was eighteen years, nine months later that, following the events of World War II and their aftermath as most of Eastern and Central Europe fell under the iron hand of the Soviet Union’s puppet regimes and as Catholics in Red China were subjected to the horrors of Mao Zedong and his rump Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association with which Jorge Mario Bergoglio has made his peace, our last true pope thus far issued his last encyclical letter, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958, just two weeks after he had enounced the Red Chinese rump church in Ad Apostolorum Principis. Meminisse Iuvat was His Holiness’s valedictory encyclical letter, if you will, in which he gave Catholics encouragement to carry on in the midst of all the dangers and difficulties that afflicted Holy Mother Church at the time.

Meminisse Iuvat was Pope Pius XII’s review of his pontificate, which began with the reminder that he had attempted to engage in a holy crusade of prayer by seeking the intercession of the Mother of God in all the dangers of the moment, dangers that were only exacerbated, not resolved by the ineffectiveness of human plans and resources:

1. It is helpful to recall, when new dangers threaten Christians and the Church, the Spouse of the Divine Redeemer, that We — like Our Predecessors in bygone days — have turned in prayer to the Virgin Mary, our loving Mother, and have urged the whole flock entrusted to Our care to place itself confidently under her protection.

2. Thus, when the world was rocked by a terrible war, We did not simply preach peace to citizens, peoples, and nations, nor did We merely work to restore to mutual agreement — under the standard of truth, justice, and love — those whom strife had divided. On the contrary, when all human resources and human plans proved ineffective, in many letters of exhortation and in a holy crusade of prayer We invoked heaven’s help through the mighty intercession of the great Mother of God, to whose Immaculate Heart We consecrated Ourselves and the whole human race.[1]

3. By now, of course, that war is over, but a just peace does not yet prevail, nor do men live in concord founded on brotherly understanding. For the seeds of war either lurk in hiding or — from time to time — erupt threateningly and hold the hearts of men in frightened suspense, especially since human ingenuity has devised weapons so powerful that they can ravage and sink into general destruction, not only the vanquished, but the victors with them, and all mankind. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

Consider how this lament is similar to that of Pope Pius XI when he issued Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, at the beginning of his pontificate just four years after the end of World War I and three years after the Paris Peace Treaty negotiated at Versailles by the Judeo-Masonic agents of the New World Order had taken effect:

20. Peace indeed was signed in solemn conclave between the belligerents of the late War. This peace, however, was only written into treaties. It was not received into the hearts of men, who still cherish the desire to fight one another and to continue to menace in a most serious manner the quiet and stability of civil society. Unfortunately the law of violence held sway so long that it has weakened and almost obliterated all traces of those natural feelings of love and mercy which the law of Christian charity has done so much to encourage. Nor has this illusory peace, written only on paper, served as yet to reawaken similar noble sentiments in the souls of men. On the contrary, there has been born a spirit of violence and of hatred which, because it has been indulged in for so long, has become almost second nature in many men. There has followed the blind rule of the inferior parts of the soul over the superior, that rule of the lower elements “fighting against the law of the mind,” which St. Paul grieved over. (Rom. vii, 23) (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

The words of our last true Successors of Saint Peter thus far describe the world in which we live presently just as much as they did when they were written, respectively, eighty-nine and sixty-four years ago. Men must fall into states of abject barbarism when their hearts do not beat as one with the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary to which Pope Pius XII had been so dedicated as to establish a fast in its honor as a direct response to Our Lady’s Fatima Message.

Pope Pius XII’s unalterable opposition to Communism, which is diabolical in its origins and, as such, aims at setting class against class, brother against brother, race against race, faction against faction, stands in sharp contrast to Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s efforts to blame believing Catholics for resisting Communist persecutions and thus, Jorge believes, of bringing problems needlessly on themselves on others:

Bergoglio: Qualifying China as undemocratic, I do not identify with that, because it's such a complex country ... yes, it is true that there are things that seem undemocratic to us, that is true. Cardinal Zen is going to trial these days, I think. And he says what he feels, and you can see that there are limitations there. More than qualifying, because it is difficult, and I do wish to qualify, they are impressions, and I try to support the path of dialogue.

Then, in the dialogue you clarify many things and not only about the Church, also about other areas; for example the extent of China, the governors of the provinces who are all diverse. There are different cultures within China, it is a giant, and understanding China is an enormous thing. But you do not have to lose patience, it takes a lot, but we have to go with dialogue, I try to refrain from qualifying it... but let us go forward.

Elise Allen: “What about Xi Jinping?”

Bergoglio: He had a State visit there, but I did not see him.

Maria Angeles Conde Mir, ROME REPORTS
“In the Declaration they signed [at the Congress, ed.], all leaders underscored an appeal to governments and international organizations to protect people who are persecuted because of their ethnicity or religion. Unfortunately, this is what is happening in Nicaragua. We know that you spoke about this on 21 August during the Angelus. But maybe you can add something more for the Catholic people, especially in Nicaragua. Also another question. We have seen you doing well on this trip. We would like to know if after this journey you will be able to take up again the one to Africa that you postponed, and if there are other journeys planned.”

Bergoglio: Regarding Nicaragua, the news is clear. There is dialogue. There have been talks with the government; there is dialogue. That doesn't mean you approve of everything the government does or you disapprove of everything. It does not. There is dialogue and there is a need to solve problems.

Right now there are problems. I at least expect the sisters of Mother Teresa to be able to return. These women are good revolutionaries, but of the Gospel! They do not make war on anyone. Rather, we all need these women. This is a gesture that is difficult to understand... But hopefully they will return.

And may the dialogue continue. But never stop the dialogue. There are things you do not understand. To send a nuncio away to the border is a serious diplomatic matter. The nuncio is a good person who has now been appointed somewhere else. These things are hard to understand and also hard to swallow. But in Latin America, there are situations like that in various places. (Jorge: ‘Difficult to dialogue with those who start wars.)

Interjection:

Unlike Pope Pius XII, Jorge Mario Bergoglio would have thrown Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, Aloysius Cardinal Stepinac, and Bishop Ignatius King under the bus without batting an eyelash.

As a true utopian child who came to age in in the 1960s when he was in his middle to late twenties before turning thirty on December 16, 1966, Jorge Bergoglio, who like Angelo Roncalli before him, sees good intentions in Communism, believes that Communists and other persecutors of Holy Mother Church and her children negotiate in good faith. They do not. Communism is a lie. Communists are liars. Negotiating with Communists always results in the further persecution of Catholics, something that Pope Pius XI found out very bitterly when he trusted the “good intentions” Plutarco Elias Calles and his stooge, Emilio Portes Gil, after the ill-advised peace accord in Mexico in 1939. It is a lesson being taught to the conciliar revolutionaries today, but it is a lesson they do not want to learn as they believe that Catholics should accommodate themselves to Communism, which Jorge Mario Bergoglio has told us in his own words is “not undemocratic.”

Writing in Meminisse Iuvat, Pope Pius XII reminded Catholics that human plans, human, resourcs, and human endeavors are futile and will fail when Almighty God is esteemed little, denied His proper place, or even completely disregarded:

4. If we weigh carefully the causes of today’s crises and those that are ahead, we shall soon find that human plans, human resources, and human endeavors are futile and will fail when Almighty God — He who enlightens, commands, and forbids; He who is the source and guarantor of justice, the fountainhead of truth, the basis of all laws — is esteemed but little, denied His proper place, or even completely disregarded. If a house is not built on a solid and sure foundation, it tumbles down; if a mind is not enlightened by the divine light, it strays more or less from the whole truth; if citizens, peoples, and nations are not animated by brotherly love, strife is born, waxes strong, and reaches full growth.

5. It is Christianity, above all others, which teaches the full truth, real justice, and that divine charity which drives away hatred, ill will, and enmity. Christianity has been given charge of these virtues by the Divine Redeemer, who is the way, the truth, and the life,[2] and she must do all in her power to put them to use. Anyone, therefore, who knowingly ignores Christianity — the Catholic Church — or tries to hinder, demean, or undo her, either weakens thereby the very bases of society, or tries to replace them with props not strong enough to support the edifice of human worth, freedom, and well-being.

6. There must, then, be a return to Christian principles if we are to establish a society that is strong, just, and equitable. It is a harmful and reckless policy to do battle with Christianity, for God guarantees, and history testifies, that she shall exist forever. Everyone should realize that a nation cannot be well organized or well ordered without religion. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

One will note that Pope Pius XII was careful to make the same distinctions as had been made by previous popes concerning the fact that Christianity and the Catholic Church are coextensive. This is a distinction made by Pope Leo XIII in his own last encyclical letter and by Pope Pius XII himself in Mystici Corporis Christi, June 29, 1943:

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which  it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel it does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes. It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church— we shall find nothing more noble, morre sublime, or more divine than the expression “the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ” – an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the holy Fathers. . . .

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

Moreover, Pope Pius XII’s discussion of the futility of human actions to resolve the problems caused by sinful men who are intent on persevering in their sins of one kind or another was identical to what Pope Pius XI had written in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio:

24. The inordinate desire for pleasure, concupiscence of the flesh, sows the fatal seeds of division not only among families but likewise among states; the inordinate desire for possessions, concupiscence of the eyes, inevitably turns into class warfare and into social egotism; the inordinate desire to rule or to domineer over others, pride of life, soon becomes mere party or factional rivalries, manifesting itself in constant displays of conflicting ambitions and ending in open rebellion, in the crime of lese majeste, and even in national parricide.

25. These unsuppressed desires, this inordinate love of the things of the world, are precisely the source of all international misunderstandings and rivalries, despite the fact that oftentimes men dare to maintain that acts prompted by such motives are excusable and even justifiable because, forsooth, they were performed for reasons of state or of the public good, or out of love for country. Patriotism -- the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ -- becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life, that, in the last analysis, it is "justice which exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable." (Proverbs xiv, 34)

26. Perhaps the advantages to one's family, city, or nation obtained in some such way as this may well appear to be a wonderful and great victory (this thought has been already expressed by St. Augustine), but in the end it turns out to be a very shallow thing, something rather to inspire us with the most fearful apprehensions of approaching ruin. "It is a happiness which appears beautiful but is brittle as glass. We must ever be on guard lest with horror we see it broken into a thousand pieces at the first touch." (St. Augustine de Civitate Dei, Book iv, Chap. 3)

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

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

That last paragraph, number twenty-eight, says it all. The gist of the two hundred thirty-seven articles linked at the top of this article can be summarized in the following words written by Pope Pius XI nearly one hundred years ago:

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

Pope Pius XII went on to explain in his last encyclical letter how great numbers of citizens, especially the uneducated, are won over by errors, something that applies very much in our world today because even those who believe they are “educated” are not truly such as they have brainwashed into believing every ideological “ ‘ism” imaginable, including being trained today to believe that there are more than two genders and that those of a certain race should feel guilty for the past injustices done those of different races and, quite indeed, should understand when they and “their kind” are subjected to violent assaults, which their masters have taught them, are fully justifiable and to be encouraged. Pope Pius XII’s prophetic insight in this regard has been ignored even by most fully traditional Catholics:

7. As a matter of fact, religion contributes more to good, just, and orderly life than it could if it had been conceived for no other purpose than to supply and augment the necessities of mortal existence. For religion bids men live in charity, justice, and obedience to law; it condemns and outlaws vice; it incites citizens to the pursuit of virtue and thereby rules and moderates their public and private conduct. Religion teaches mankind that a better distribution of wealth should be had, not by violence or revolution, but by reasonable regulations, so that the proletarian classes which do not yet enjoy life’s necessities or advantages may be raised to a more fitting status without social strife.

8. As We reflect on this subject, from a vantage point that enables Us to transcend the tides of human passion and to love as a father the people of every race, two matters come to mind which cause Us great worry and anxiety.

9. The first of these is that there are some countries in which Christian principles and the Catholic religion are not given their proper place. Great numbers of the citizens, especially from the ranks of the uneducated, are easily won over by widely published errors, particularly since these are often colored with the appearances of truth. The seductive allurements of vice, which tend to corrupt minds through all sorts of publications, motion pictures, and television performances, are a special menace to unsuspecting young people.

10. There are writers and publishers whose goal is not to turn their readers to truth, virtue, and wholesome entertainment, but to stir up vicious and violent appetites solely for the sake of gain, and even to assail and defile with lies, calumnies, and accusations all that is holy, beautiful, and noble. Unfortunately, the truth is often distorted; lies and scandals are published abroad. The obvious result is damage to civil society and harm to the Church. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

Pope Pius XII was referring specifically to countries such as the United States of America and elsewhere in the supposedly civilized “West” that specialized in the dissemination of error and vice, and there are more relevant today than they were sixty-four years ago given the complete descent of motion pictures and television programs into an abyss of licentiousness and amorality that entice people to live in a debauched, depraved manner while their legitimate liberties are being stripped away by the modern caesars intent on distracting the masses with bread and circuses.

Pope Pius XII went on to explain how Communist authorities were persecuting Catholics in Eastern and Central Europe and Red China by repressing them, imprisoning them, taking away their newspapers, and deny even the practice of the Holy Faith:

11. And secondly, We are aware — to the great sorrow of Our fatherly heart — that the Catholic Church, in both its Latin and Oriental rites, is beset in many lands by such persecutions that the clergy and faithful, if not in so many words, certainly in fact, are confronted with this dilemma: to give up public profession and propagation of their faith, or to suffer penalties, even very serious ones. As a result, many bishops have been driven from their sees or so impeded that they cannot freely exercise their ministry; they have even been cast into prison or exiled. And so with rash daring men undertake to fulfill the words: “I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.”[3]

12. In addition, newspapers, magazines, and other publications put out by Catholics have been almost completely silenced, as if truth were subject to the exclusive control and discretion of political rulers, and as though divine and human learning and the liberal arts need not be free if they are to flourish for the public and common good.

13. Schools once conducted by Catholics have been interdicted and closed; those that replace them either teach nothing at all of God and religion, or — as is more common — expound and popularize the lethal tenets of atheism.

14. Missionaries who have left their homes and dear native lands and suffered many serious discomforts in order to bring the light and the strength of the gospel to others, have been driven from many regions as menaces and evil-doers, so that the clergy who remain, since they are too few in relation to the region’s population, and are also hated and persecuted in their turn, cannot adequately provide for the needs of the faithful.

15. The Church’s rights, including the right, under the mandate of the Holy See, to choose and consecrate bishops who will lawfully govern the Christian flock, have been trod under foot, to the great loss of the faithful, as if the Catholic Church were a creature of a single nation, dependent on its civil authority, and not a divine institution extending to all peoples.

16. But despite these grave and distressing problems, a thought comes to Us which gives Our paternal heart great comfort. It is this: We know that most of the faithful, of both the Latin and the Oriental rites, are practicing and defending their ancestral faith tenaciously — despite the fact that they have not the help and assistance which their lawful pastors could give them, were they not far away or otherwise impeded. These Christians hold fast to the faith with courage, and place their hope in Him who knows well the tears and suffering of those “who suffer persecution for justice’ sake,”[4] in Him who “does not delay in his promises”[5] but will some day comfort his children with the reward they have earned.

17. In a particular way, therefore, We exhort with paternal affection those of Our Venerable Brothers and beloved children who are under many dangerous and deceitful pressures — pressures which would urge them to stop supporting the firm, solid, and constant unity of the Church and that close union with the Apostolic See without which this unity cannot have a sure foundation. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

The brute force methods that were used in the Soviet Union and its satellite states behind the Iron Curtain in Europe and behind the Bamboo Curtain in Red China have been refined somewhat over the last six decades, although it is increasingly the case where brute force against those who oppose the prevailing evils of the day is being used in the name of fighting “domestic extremism.” Here is a case-in-point:

BUCKS COUNTY, Pennsylvania (LifeSiteNews) – A well-known pro-life author, sidewalk counselor, and father of seven was the latest victim of a U.S. Department of Justice-sponsored SWAT raid and arrest — for supposed “FACE Act” violations — at his rural home as his children looked on “screaming.”

Mark Houck is the founder and president of The King’s Men, which promotes healing for victims of pornography addiction and promotes Christian virtues among men in the United States and Europe.

According to his wife Ryan-Marie, who spoke with LifeSiteNews, he also drives two hours south to Philadelphia every Wednesday to sidewalk counsel for six to eight hours at two different abortion centers.

Ryan-Marie, who is a homeschooling mother, described how the SWAT team of 25 to 30 FBI agents swarmed their property with around 15 vehicles at 7:05 a.m. this morning. Having quickly surrounded the house with rifles in firing position, “they started pounding on the door and yelling for us to open it.”

Before opening the door, she explained, her husband tried to calm them, saying, “‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming,” she said.

When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie described.

When they came in, they ordered the kids to stay upstairs. “Our staircase is open, so [the kids] were all at the top of the stairs which faces the front door, and I was on the stairs as well, coming down.”

“The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic,” she explained.

After asking them why they were at the house, the agents said they were there to arrest Mark. When Ryan-Marie asked for their warrant, “they said that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not.”

When Ryan-Marie protested, saying that is kidnapping, “you can’t just come to a person’s house and kidnap them at gunpoint,” they agreed to get the warrant for her from one of their vehicles.

At this point, Mark asked her to get him a sweatshirt and his rosaries, but when she returned, they already had loaded him into a vehicle.

They provided the first page of the warrant and said they were taking him to “the federal building in downtown Philadelphia.”

“After they had taken Mark, and the kids were all screaming that he was their best friend, the [FBI agents on her porch] kind of softened a bit. I think they realized what was happening. Or maybe they actually looked at the warrant,” Ryan-Marie explained. “They looked pretty ashamed at what had just happened.”

As a result, the homeschool mother said her kids were “really sad and stressed. So, I’ve already reached out to some psychiatrists or psychologists to try and help us through this. I don’t really know what’s going to come of it when you see guns pointed at your dad and your mom in your house when you first wake up in the morning,” she lamented.

The warrant charged Mark with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, due to a claimed “ATTACK OF A PATIENT ESCORT.”

Ryan-Marie stated this charge comes from an incident that had already been thrown out of the District Court in Philadelphia but was somehow picked up by Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice.

On several occasions when Mark went to sidewalk counsel last year, he took his eldest son, who was only 12 at the time, she explained. For “weeks and weeks,” a “pro-abortion protester” would speak to the boy saying “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things,” such as “you’re dad’s a fag,” and other statements that were too vulgar for her to convey.

Repeatedly, Mark would tell this pro-abortion man that he did not have permission to speak to his son and please refrain from doing so. And “he kept doing it and kind of came into [the son’s] personal space” obscenely ridiculing his father. At this point, “Mark shoved him away from his child, and the guy fell back.”

“He didn’t have any injuries or anything, but he tried to sue Mark,” and the case was thrown out of court in the early summer.

Since the Biden administration has taken power in January 2021, Garland’s Department of Justice and the FBI have committed dozens of SWAT team raids that have been characterized as a political “weaponization” of the federal agencies against pro-lifers, Trump supporters, conservative Christians, and medical freedom advocates.

For example, in contrast to left-wing rioters who caused enormous damage in cities across the nation in 2020, and the vandals who have attacked dozens of pro-life centers this year with little or no legal ramifications, the Department of Justice implemented the harshest of consequences for those they identified as having anything to do with the disturbance at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. These actions have included early morning SWAT team arrests, ransacked homes, confiscation of property, indefinite pre-trial solitary confinement without bail in a dedicated D.C. prison, significant physical abuse, and the violation of the Constitutional right to a speedy trial.

In March, the FBI rounded up 10 pro-life activists, including Joan Andrews Bell, with SWAT team raids that serve to intimidate and humiliate the accused through an exercise of excessive force.

A surfaced video of one of these raids shows armed agents holding pro-lifers at gunpoint and ordering them to put their hands up, drop to their knees and scoot backward out their front door in the middle of the night. The pro-lifers are respectful and compliant throughout.

After the FBI’s unprecedented August 8 raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.”

Soon after Joe Biden’s September 1 speech where he declared war on conservative Christians, dozens of Trump allies had their homes raided by the FBI, which Steve Bannon referred to as “a Gestapo tactic,” and said it was “all about intimidation.”

In response to the raid on the Houck residence this morning, however, local pro-life advocates don’t seem to be intimidated, but energized. In addition to sponsoring a fundraiser for this family, they will be holding a prayer rally at the “Philadelphia Women’s Center” abortion facility at 777 Appletree St. from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday, September 24. All are invited to come and pray peacefully and make a financial donation as well. (FBI raids home of Catholic pro-life speaker, author with guns drawn as his terrified kids watch.)

One will never hear a word from Jorge Mario Bergoglio condemning this raid. He will not lift a finger in support of Mark Houck. The same man who denounced the storming of Capitol Hill by a motley group of people, most of whom had no idea what they were doing other than engaging in some kind of inchoate protest, on January 6, 2021 (see Capitol riot: Pope Francis says violence in DC must be 'condemned'), will say noting to condemn the Biden administration’s war on political and religious dissent from its unbridled agenda of evil. The very same Bolshevik and Maoist tactics that Pope Pius XII condemned are being used in the West while the supposed “pope” worries about “sustainable development goals” and commits acts of apostasy with leaders of false religions in Kazakhstan.

Pope Pius XII’s Meminisse Iuvat, which was certainly written while the pontiff was aware that his death was imminent, contained a denunciation of false doctrines and defended Holy Mother Church as the sole repository of the Sacred Deposit Faith by adhering loyally to the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff:

18. This unity is, indeed, being attacked by false doctrines and by a variety of insidious strategems. But all should remember that the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church, must be “closely joined and knit together through every joint of the system according to the function in due measure of each single part,”[6] “until We all attain to the unity of the faith and of the deep knowledge of the Son of God, to perfect manhood, to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ,”[7] whose Vicar on earth is — by divine appointment — the Roman Pontiff, as successor of Peter.

19. They should recall and meditate upon the wise words of Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr: “The Lord spoke thus to Peter: I say to thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. . .[8] On Peter alone He raised His Church. . . We must all resolutely preserve and defend this unity, but especially we bishops who govern the Church. . .

20. “For the Church is one, although she embraces greater and greater multitudes in the course of her prolific growth. So the sun has many rays, but one light; a tree has many branches, but one trunk rooted firmly in the ground; and when many streams issue from a single source, though their number seems to come directly from the abundance of flowing water, still there is only one source. Shut out a ray of the sun: the unity of its light has not been sundered; tear a branch from a tree: that branch no longer puts forth shoots; block a stream from its source: that stream dries up.

21. “In like manner, the Church is steeped in the Lord’s light and spreads the rays of that light through the world: but it is one light and its unity is not several. The Church extends her branches over the whole world in rich profusion; her full, flowing streams spread everywhere: but there is only one trunk, only one source. . .

22. “And He who does not have the Church as his mother, cannot have God as his father. . . He who does not uphold this unity does not uphold the law of God, does not uphold the faith of the Father and the Son, and has neither life nor salvation.”[9]

23. These words of the saintly martyr and bishop afford comfort, encouragement, and a shield of strength — especially since they cannot maintain communication with the Holy See (or cannot easily do so) and are in serious peril, since they must surmount many obstacles and deceits. Those in such a plight should rely upon God’s help, which they must never cease to implore in humble prayer. They must remember that all who persecute the Church — as history shows — have passed like shadows, but the sun of God’s truth never sets, because “the word of the Lord endures forever.” (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

This was an admonition to civil rulers in Communist lands seeking to divide Catholics from their Holy Father. However, it was also an admonition against the Modernists and New Theologians whose false beliefs His Holiness had condemned in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, and whom he knew to have taken over large sections of the world’s Catholic colleges, universities, and seminaries and who, truth be told, even he had appointed to the highest positions of trust during his pontificate. It is not without reason that Pope Pius XII is reported to have said before he died, “After me, the deluge.” Indeed.

In particular, though, the state of the Church Militant in Red China was fresh on His Holiness’s mine just two weeks after he had issued Ad Apostolorum Principis. He knew what had happened to Bishop Francis Ford and he was painfully aware that the courageous Bishop Ignatius Kung of Shanghei had been sentenced to prison just two years previously. Unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Pius XII had a paternal concern for his bishops, priests, religious, and laity who were being persecuted by Communist authorities. He knew Communism to be evil. Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes that only American “conservatives” and Catholic traditionalists, whom he believes cling to a “religion of the dead,” are committed to evil, not Xi Jinping and not Daniel Ortega.

Pope Pius XII went to great lengths in Meminisse Iuvat to remind Catholics not to lose heart in the midst of the difficulties that plagued Holy Mother Church and her children in so many places around the world, stressing the fact that Our Lord told us to expect persecutions, each of which are the Divinely chosen means by which we can grow in holiness and demonstrate genuine apostolic courage to our persecutors, calumniators, detractors, jailers, torturers, and executioners. Even if it is not God’s Holy Will for us to conquer these enemies of the Holy Faith in this passing, mortal vale of tears, the only conquest that matters if that over the devil, who prowls about the world like a roaring lion seeking the ruin of souls, by means of begging Our Lady to send us the graces of final penitence so that we can be every ready for the fearful moment of our Particular Judgment.

The battle we fight is to not to be fear in a spirit of fear or agitation. The battle we fight against the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil is supernatural in nature as we pray for all those who persecute us and seek their conversion to the true Faith before they die

God has appointed us from all eternity to live in these particular times, which means that the graces His Divine Son won for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that flow into our souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, are more than sufficient to thrive supernaturally. Our Lord told us that His yoke is sweet, and His burden is light. Why do not take Him at His Holy Word?

This is how Pope Pius XII phrased these truths as he specifically noted the sufferings of Catholics in Eastern Europe and Asia, Catholics who were suffering, of course, under the thumb of Communist oppression:

24. The society which Christ founded can be attacked, but not defeated, for she draws her strength from God, not from man. And yet, there is no doubt that she will be harassed through the centuries by persecutions, by contradictions, by calumnies — as was the lot long ago of her Divine Founder — for He said: “If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also.”[11] But it is equally certain that, just as Christ our Redeemer rose in triumph, so the Church shall someday win a peaceful victory over all her enemies.

25. Have confidence, therefore; be brave and steadfast soldiers. We wish to counsel you in the words of St. Ignatius, martyr, although We know you do not require such counsel: “Serve Him for whom you fight. . . May none of you desert Him! Your baptism must be a shield; your faith a helmet; your charity a lance; your patience a suit of armor. Your works should be your credentials, so that you may be worthy to receive your reward.”[12]

26. And the beautiful words of Bishop St. Ambrose should give you sure hope and unwavering courage: “Hold on to the tiller of faith so that the rough winds of this world may not bandy you. The sea is vast and large, but do not fear; for he has established it (the earth) upon the water, and set it firmly upon the rivers.[13] And so it is understandable that the Lord’s Church stands unmoved among the waves of this world, for she is built on the apostolic rock and holds fast to her foundation, unmoved by the onslaughts of the raging sea.[14] She is battered by the surf, but is not shaken. The physical elements of this world crash with thunder about her, but she provides a safe port for those who toil on the deep.”[15]

27. In the apostolic age, when the Christians of a particular region were suffering unusual hardship, all the others — united with them by the bonds of charity — raised suppliant prayers to God, the Father of mercies, with the one accord of brothers, that He might deign in His goodness to strengthen the hearts of their brothers and might cause better times to come quickly upon the whole Church.

28. So too today, Venerable Brothers, We pray that God’s comfort may descend, in answer to their brothers’ prayers, upon all in Eastern Europe and in Asia who are oppressed by a wretched and inimical state of affairs. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

What applied to Eastern Europe and Asia sixty-four years ago applies to us all now as the “pandemic” was used by elected officials and unelected apparatchiks to be the means by which the so-called “civilized” West could be transformed into a mirror image of the Communist China’s system of social credits, thought control, censorship, surveillance—including neighbor spying upon neighbor in the name of “public health,” and mandatory vaccination programs designed to maximize profits for the Chicom’s stooges in the West’s Big Pharma while killing off people aplenty and sterilizing women as part of Klaus Schwab’s Global Reset.

Pope Pius XII defended Catholics when they were undergoing persecution by the Soviets and the Red Chinese. Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his Chief Appeaser, Pietro Parolin, have been steadily reliable agents of the lockdown state's new red dawn.

The Pope of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pope Pius XII, exhorted Catholics to have great confidence in the August Queen of Heaven, Our Lady, and in her intercessory power:

29. And since We have great confidence in the intercessory power of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, it is Our ardent wish that, during the novena customarily held before the Feast of the Assumption, all Catholics throughout the world raise public prayers to heaven for the Church, which is — as We have said — afflicted and harassed in certain lands.

30. We confidently hope that Mary will not refuse or leave unfilled Our entreaties and the unanimous prayers of all Catholics — she whom We, with divine approval, decreed and proclaimed, in the Holy Year of 1950, to have been taken up, body and soul, into the abode of blessedness in heaven;[16] she whom We solemnly declared and ordained to be properly venerated by all mankind as the Queen of Heaven;[17] she, finally, whose maternal graces We invited a multitude to enjoy on the centenary of her appearances, as a gracious giver of gifts, in the grotto of Lourdes to an innocent girl.[18]

31. By your entreaties and your example, Venerable Brothers, may the flocks entrusted to you approach the altars of the Mother of God prayerfully and in great numbers on the days named. May they pray with one voice and one spirit that she who “became a cause of salvation to the whole human race”[19] might obtain for the Church the freedom she needs if she is to bring men to eternal salvation, reenforce just laws with the mandates of conscience, and bolster the bases of civil society.

32. Through Mary’s maternal intercession, they should pray particularly that shepherds kept far from their flocks, or otherwise restrained from the free exercise of their ministry, may be restored as speedily as possible to the positions they formerly, and properly, held; that the faithful who are beset by intrigues, falsehoods, and dissension, might find strength in the full light of truth and in unqualified union and charity; that the wavering and weak might be so strengthened by God’s grace that they will be ready and able to bear up under any hardship without abandoning Christian faith and Christian unity. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

We are lost without Our Lady. Lost. Doomed. Damned.

Anyone who thinks that the problems which beset the world-at-large and the Church Militant on earth at this time can be ameliorated without a firm reliance upon, confidence in, and an unapologetic public proclamation of devotion to her and her intercessory power, and by this I means to call out all “conservative” Catholics in public life who write as naturalists (Americanists, American exceptionalists, founderologists, libertarians) and who refuse to make any public reference to Our Lady, her Most Holy Rosary, and to the fact that no one can save their souls without being devoted to her and cooperating with the graces she sends to them to do so.

Pope Pius XII called upon Catholics to pray to Our Lady so that all Catholics could have their lawful shepherds again, and we should do so now so that we can have a true pope restored to the Throne of Saint Peter to which each of us will readily and humbly submit in all of his decisions and declarations without a moment’s hesitation:

33. We ardently pray that every diocese might soon have its lawful shepherd again. May Christian principles be taught freely in all lands and among all classes of citizens.

34. May the young, in grade schools and high schools, in workshops and on farms, escape the snares of materialistic, atheistic, and hedonistic doctrines, which cripple the wings of the mind and cut the sinews of virtue. May they rather be illumined with the light of the wisdom of God’s gospel, which will rouse, raise, and direct them to what is best.

35. May the gates of truth be everywhere unobstructed; may no one bar those gates unjustly. May all men realize that nothing can withstand for long the force of truth or charity.

36. And, finally, may the heralds of the gospel soon seek out again the peoples whom they once led to Christ with apostolic zeal and exhausting toil, and whom they ardently desire to raise to a richer Christian and civil culture, even at the cost of difficulty, toil, and adversity.

37. May all the faithful ask these favors of the dear Mother of God; and for those who persecute the Christian religion may the faithful implore forgiveness in that spirit of charity which led the Apostle of the Gentiles to say, “Bless those who persecute you.”[20] They should also be mindful to pray that these men be given God’s grace and heavenly light, which alone can scatter the shadows of error and set consciences aright. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

Interjection:

Yes, we must forgive others as we are forgiven.

The life of a Catholic is not that of revenge and hatred. It is not that of willing ham to those who persecute us. It is about forgiving others and seeing in our persecutors our best friends as they have been chosen by God to be the means by which we may humbled, brought low before men, made the laughingstock of all, and to be held contemptibly even by complete strangers. This is, after all, what Our Blessed Lord and Saviour chose to do when He effected our Redemption during His Passion and Death:

Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? [2] And he shall grow up as a tender plant before him, and as a root out of a thirsty ground: there is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of him: [3] Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not. [4] Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. [5] But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.

[6] All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. [7] He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth. [8] He was taken away from distress, and from judgment: who shall declare his generation? because he is cut off out of the land of the living: for the wickedness of my people have I struck him. [9] And he shall give the ungodly for his burial, and the rich for his death: because he hath done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in his mouth. [10] And the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity: if he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in his hand.

[11] Because his soul hath laboured, he shall see and be filled: by his knowledge shall this my just servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. [12] Therefore will I distribute to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he hath delivered his soul unto death, and was reputed with the wicked: and he hath borne the sins of many, and hath prayed for the transgressors. (Isaias 53: 1-12.)

We cannot imitate Our Lord’s self-abnegation without Our Lady’s help and without imploring her to be virtuous as we climb the heights of personal sanctity, something that Pope Pius XII emphasized as he concluded his last encyclical letter, Meminisse Iuvat:

38. But, as you well know, Venerable Brothers, a renewal of Christian life must accompany these public petitions. Otherwise such prayers are idle words, which cannot be wholly pleasing to God.

39. And so, out of that ardent and zealous charity with which all Christians are bound to love the Catholic Church, they should address their prayers to heaven, but they should also offer interior acts of penance, works of virtue, sacrifices, inconveniences, and all the pains and hardships under which we labor, of necessity, in this mortal life, but which we should occasionally, take upon ourselves voluntarily, in a spirit of generosity.

40. Through this sound renewal of their way of life, joined with suppliant prayers, they will win God’s favor for themselves and for holy Church, whom they must embrace as they would a loving mother.

41. The faithful should present the sort of picture — as often as circumstances require — which is described so wonderfully, beautifully, and meaningfully in the Letter to Diognetus: “The Christians . . . are in the flesh, but do not live by the flesh. They dwell on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey valid laws, and even go beyond the demands of law in the conduct of their lives. They love all men, and yet all men persecute them. They are not understood, and yet they are condemned; they are put to death, and yet their life is quickened. . . They are dishonored, and yet in the midst of dishonor they find honor. Their good name is railed at, and yet is presented as evidence of their justice. . . When they conduct themselves like honest men, they are punished like criminals; while they are being punished, they rejoice as though they are being exalted…[21]

42. “To express all this briefly: what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world.”[22]

43. If a Christian way of life flourishes again, as it did in the age of the Apostles and martyrs, then we can reasonably hope that the Blessed Virgin Mary — who longs with a mother’s heart that all her sons should live virtuously — will graciously heed our prayers and will soon grant, in response to our petitions, happier and more peaceful times for the Church of her Only Begotten Son and for the whole human society.

44. We wish, Venerable Brothers, that you will make Our wishes and exhortations known on Our behalf, in the way you think best, to the faithful entrusted to your care. Meanwhile, as a pledge of heaven’s blessing and a witness of Our paternal good will, We lovingly impart Our Apostolic Benediction to each of you, to the flocks entrusted to you, and individually to each of those who suffer persecution and torment because they defend the rights of the Church and give evidence of the love they bear her.

45. Written at Rome, in Saint Peter’s, on the fourteenth day of July, in the year 1958, the twentieth of Our Pontificate. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)

We need to give a Catholic witness at all times. We cannot live in fear nor can we permit ourselves to be agitated by the babbling, blathering ignoramuses of naturalism who know nothing of First and Last Things and believe in the “salvific” nature of politics and elections despite all the evidence that things always get worse no matter how elections turn out as those of the “left” and the “right” continue to sin unrepentantly and put material prosperity above all things. No one can enjoy physical safety when God’s Holy Laws are ignored or derided and when men make war upon their own souls by their persistence in sins of one kind or another.

Blasphemy, impurity, indecency, immodesty, reveling, quarreling, heresy, indifferentism, relativism, positivism, pragmatism, materialism, secularism, Machiavellianism, utilitarianism, and every other “ ‘ism” abounds while men are either ignorant of the true Faith, Catholicism, or, if they are Catholic, are too ashamed, too fearful of losing human respect to proclaim the true Faith as the foundation of order within the soul and order within society. Men will always seek “solutions” to social problems in all the wrong places when they forget the reality of Original Sin, the horror of their own Actual Sins and refuse to seek out the ineffable mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

Yes, we need Our Lady’s help to live virtuously and to grow in holiness. It is holiness that we need, not stratagems of supposed electoral “success.” The only success that matters to Our Lord is that we save our souls by means of the graces He has won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross and that He chooses to send to us through the loving hands of the Mediatrix of All Graces, His Most Blessed Mother.

Concluding Remarks

As I have noted in the past, Pope Pius XII’s legacy is complex as he gave a truly mystifying talk to Italian liturgists endorsing the study of “depth psychology,” a term that had been originated with none other than the atheist named Sigmund Freud and another fraud named Eugen Bleuler in Switzerland before being developed more by others, especially the anti-Catholic cult-leader and quack named Dr. Carl Jung, in the Sacred Liturgy (see Dr. Carol A. Byrne’s scholarly discussion of Pope Pius XII’s address at: Pope Pius XII's 1956 Address to Italian Liturgists ). It is also not to dismiss Pope  Pius XII’s personal sanctity to state firmly that he was a terrible judge of character and put into place each of the key figures that would lead the conciliar revolution after his death, including Angelo Roncalli, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini and, among so many others, the two men whose multiple misrepresentations of fact concerning the nature of the liturgical  reforms instituted at their behest from 1951 to the time of Pope Pius XII’s death on October 9, 1958, Annibale Bugnini and Ferdinando Antonelli. Many saints were bad judges of character and/or poor administrators. Indeed, Pope Saint Peter Celestine resigned the papacy because he did not believe himself up to the task of papal administration and dealing with the conflicts of his day.

This having been noted, however, it is vitally necessary to state that Pope Pius XII, to whom Our Lord gave an apparition of His Most Sacred Heart and who, as mentioned before in this commentary, was devoted to Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary and her Immaculate Heart. Pope Pius XII solemnly defined the doctrine of Our Lady’s Assumption into Heaven, and he consecrated the world and Russia, although not collegially, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in whose honor he established a liturgical feast day in 1944.

The following words of his 1942 consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary should be prayed every First Saturday of the month as they remind us of the fact that the world is the victims of its own iniquities and is need of Our Blessed Mother’s maternal protection and intercession:

Queen of the most holy Rosary, help of Christians, refuge of the human race, victorious in all the battles of God, we prostrate ourselves in supplication before thy throne, in the sure hope of obtaining mercy and of receiving grace and timely aid in our present calamities, not through any merits of our own on which we do not rely, but only through the immense goodness of thy mother’s Heart. In Thee and in thy Immaculate Heart, at this grave hour of human history, do we put our trust; to thee we consecrate ourselves, not only with all of Holy Church, which is the mystical body of thy Son Jesus, and which is suffering in so many of her members, being persecuted, but also with the whole world, torn by discords, agitated with the hatred, the victim of its own iniquities. Be thou moved by the sight of such material and moral degradation, such sorrows, such anguish, so many tormented souls in danger of eternal loss! Do thou, O Mother of mercy, obtain for us from God a Christ-like reconciliation of the nations, as well as those graces which can convert the souls of men in an instant, those graces which prepare the way and make certain the long desired coming of peace on earth. O Queen of peace, pray for us, and grant unto the world in the truth, the justice, and the charity of Christ. Above all, give us peace in our hearts, so that the kingdom of God, may spread it the tranquility of order. Accord thy protection to unbelievers and to all those who lie in the shadow of death; cause the Sun of Truth to rise upon them; may they enabled to join with us in repeating before the Saviour of the world: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to men of good will.” Give peace to the nations that are separated us from error or discord, and in a special manner to those peoples who profess a singular devotion toward thee; bring them back to Christ’s one fold, under the one true Shepherd. Obtain full freedom for the holy Church of God; defend her from her enemies; check the ever-increasing torrent of immorality; arouse in the faithful a practical love of purity, a practical Christian life, and an apostolic zeal, so that the number of those who serve God may increase in merit and in number. Finally, even as the Church and all mankind were once consecrated to the Heart of thy Son Jesus, because He was for all those who put their hope in Him an inexhaustible source of victory and salvation, so in like manner do we consecrate ourselves forever to thee also and to thy Immaculate Heart, Of Mother us and Queen of the world; may thy love and patronage hasten the day when the kingdom of God shall be victorious and all the nations, at peace with God and with one another, shall call thee blessed and intone with thee, from the rising of the sun to its going down, the everlasting “Magnificat” of glory, of love, of gratitude to the Heart of Jesus in which we alone can find truth, life, and peace. (Pope Pius XII, Rescript from the Secretariat of State, November 17, 1942, document exhibited, November 19, 1942, The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, pp. 345-347.)

The world is more a victim of its own iniquities, more torn with discords and more agitated by hatreds than it was when seventy-five years ago during the height of World War II when Pope Pius XII wrote his prayer of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Men and their nations are adrift as they become more and more divided as a result of the proliferation of errors that receive the sanction the civil law and the applause of “opinion makers” and as men, steeped in a variety of what Mortal Sins in the objective order things, run amok in the belief that living as beasts will not hurt themselves and their nations, no less the entire world.

Whatever Pope Pius XII’s shortcomings may have been concerning the personnel he put in place who later revealed their full agenda to the Catholic world at the “Second” Vatican Council, His Holiness was a courageous and unstinting foe of Communism and rose manfully to the defense of Catholics who were being persecuted by it in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII agreed to refrain from criticizing Communism at the “Second” Vatican Council in the Metz Accord with officials of the heretical and schismatic Russian Orthodox Church in exchange for their participation as “observers” at the robber council.

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI sold out priests behind the Iron Curtain during Pope Pius XII’s pontificate and then sold-out Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary in 1966 so that he, Montini, could engage in his policy of Ostpolik that gave Communist officials a virtual blank check to nominate and/or veto episcopal candidates to their liking.

Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II began the process of selling out the suffering underground Catholics in Red China in the 1980s.

Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI provided the blueprint for a “reconciliation” between those suffering Catholics who thought they were being faithful to true and legitimate Successors of Saint Peter with the so-called Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a blueprint that was used by Pietro Parolin at the behest of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to complete the sell-out in 2018 (see Bergoglio the Red Surrenders Faithful Catholics to Their PersecutorsNeville Bergoglio's Appeasement of the Chicom Monsters, and Doubly Betrayed by Jorge and His False Church).

Pope Pius XII’s defense of Catholics suffering under the yoke of Communism was capped by his institution in May of 1958 just five months before his death of a Votive Mass in honor of the Holy Face of Jesus that priests may celebrate or commemorate on Shrove Tuesday. However, a Votive Mass may offered albeit judiciously and not indiscriminately, on any ferial day that the Ordo specifies is permitted, and it is with this in mind that I make a modest suggestion to all fully traditional Catholic priests that they consider offering the Votive Mass of the Holy Face of Jesus on the next free liturgical day, which is Wednesday, October 12, 2022, to honor the intention of our last true Holy Father thus far to combat Communism, Protestantism, blasphemy, and heresy with public devotion to Our Lord’s Most Holy Face.

Thus, apart from Holy Mass and Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary, one of the chief ways that we can remain faithful is to make reparation for the crimes of communists and blasphemers according to the devotions revealed to Saint Mary of Saint Peter by Our Lord.

Dorothy Scallan provided an account of the origin of the Holy Face devotion and of the Golden Arrow Prayer in her book on the life of the Venerable Leo Dupont, a layman who was known in his lifetime as The Holy Man of Tours:

Then a change occurred her mystical life. The Saviour made known to the Carmelite that he wanted something more from her than her own personal sanctification through prayer and penance. The day was August 26, 1843. Sister Marie Pierre had been at Carmel about four years. When she knelt down for the regular prayer in choir at five o'clock in the evening, the Saviour revealed to her the first of a series of communications pertaining to a special mission with which He intended to entrust her. As usual, Sister Marie Pierre set this message down in writing and turned in in to the prioress who, preoccupied with other matters, gave it but slight attention.

However, a few days later when Sister Marie Pierre returned with more written accounts of further communications on the same subject, Mother Mary of the Incarnation realized that she was faced with something that was meant to reach beyond the confines of the cloister. She therefore decided to consult some reliable person outside the convent, and turned to Leo in her difficulty. “Mr. Dupont, in the last few days something quite unusual has taken place in our Carmel. Sister Marie Pierre tells me that our Lord has given her a special assignment. He told her that He was being gravely insulted by the sin of blasphemy and that He wanted reparation.”

“Blasphemy!” repeated Leo, thoughtfully. “What exactly did our Lord say?” he asked interested.

“Let me read you that written account which Sister Marie Pierre gave me, explaining precisely what transpired,” the prioress said, reaching for a sheet of paper.

“Yes, Reverend Mother, I am listening,” said Leo on the other side of the iron grating.

“Here is what the sister writes: 'Gathering the powers of my soul, Our Lord addressed me in these words: My name is everywhere blasphemed! Even children blaspheme! He made me understand that this frightful sin more than any other grievously wounds Him. By blasphemy the sinner curses Him to His Face, attacks Him openly, annuls redemption, and pronounces his own condemnation.'”

The prioress paused for a moment and then asked, “Mr. Dupont, what do you think of this? To us the very word blasphemy, is frightful!”

“Yes, Mother, but there is no running away from the fact that blasphemy is rife in our midst,” replied Leo.

“Of course, you would know better than any of us in the cloister who are shut off from worldly contact. But let me read you the rest of the written account Sister Marie Pierre has given me,” the prioress said and then began to read further, “to heal the wound inflicted on the heart of the Saviour by the poisoned arrow of blasphemy, the Master offered me a prayer which He called the Golden Arrow.

The words of this short act of praise are as follows: May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible ad ineffable name of God be praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in heaven and on earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the most Holy Sacreament of the Altar. Amen. What do you think about this, Mr. Dupont?” 

“I think the prayer is a striking act of praise to the Holy Name of God,” at once answered Leo who saw in the Golden Arrow a fitting reparation for the outrages of modern free thinkers, anarchists, atheists, and fallen-away Catholics.

“But let me tell you the rest, Mr. Dupont. According to Sister Marie Pierre, our Lord charges her to see to it that news of this revelation be given out to the public and that the 'Golden Arrow' be printed on leaflets and distributed so that people can recite this prayer in reparation for blasphemy.” explained the prioress.

“Well, in a case of that kind,” replied Leo, thoughtfully, “where distribution of printed prayers is involved, we shall need the approval of His Excellency, Archbishop Morlot. There may be delays and difficulties . . . “

Precisely, and according to Sister Marie Pierre, our Saviour already warned her that she would have a great deal to suffer in this work entrusted to her that the more agreeable anything is to God the more bitter does Satan try to make it, that thereby the soul may be disgusted and give way to discouragement.”

Leo listened attentively but said nothing, and the prioress went on, “But our Lord also assure Sister Marie Pierre that although Satan would do everything in his power to annihilate the work, his efforts would be in vain.”

“Mother, it seems you kept the most consoling part for the end,” Leo said cheerfully, but the prioress pressed on for a conclusion.

“Mr. Dupont, how shall we commence? Would you have some sort of plan?”

“Plan? But Mother, don't you see that deciding on a plan in this Work has not been left to our individual choice?”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply that our Lord Himself outlined a plan. He designated the press to be the means of establishing the Work! Isn't that right?”

“Yes, Sister said that our Lord told her expressly to have the prayers of reparation printed and distributed!” agreed the prioress.

“But to print and distribute these leaflets, we must first secure the Archbishop's permission,” countered Leo.

“Why do you think so?”

“I think it will be difficult because I know that the world loves flattery and dislikes correction. Because Sister Marie Pierre's revelation point a finger of blame at the sins of our modern society, it will require a good deal of fortitude not to shy away from making this message known.”

“Yet, we must do it. Mr. Dupont, do you think you could lay the matter before the Archbishop at your convenience?” the prioress asked hestitatingly.

“Well, Mother, I may as well tell you that I'm not accustomed to paying visits to bishops. However, if in the last resort it should devolve on me to make this errand, I will certainly not refuse. But if I may say so, I think the convent's spiritual director ought to be the person to carry this matter to His Excellency.”

In the three months that followed nothing was done to further the work of reparation. The matter was kept secret inside and outside the convent. Only the religious superiors and a few intimate friends of Carmel knew anything about it. However, Sister Marie Pierre in the meantime plunger herself deeply in the new Work.

“Since that communication, my soul is completely changed, she wrote in her diary. “Our Lord has inspired me to add to the 'Golden Arrow” some other prayers of reparation, and He has condescended to let me know that He accepted this exercise . . . “

Then, after Communion on the Feast of St. Jon of the Cross, November 24, Sister Marie Pierre received another revelation concerning the new Work. As soon as Jesus had entered my soul, He made me hear these words: Until now, I have shown you only in part the designs of My Heart, but today I will reveal them to you in in all their fulness. The earth is covered with crimes, this violation of the First Three Commandments of God has irritated My Father; the Holy Name of God blasphemed, and the Holy Day of the Lord profaned fills up the measure of iniquities; these sins have risen unto the Throne of God and provoked His wrath, which will soon burst forth, if His justice be not appeased; at no time have these crimes reached such a pitch! I desire and most ardently, that there be formed, to honor the Name of My Father, and Association, properly approved and organized. Your superiors are right in not wishing to take any steps concerning this devotion but such as are well based, for otherwise My designs would not be fulfilled.  Then I said; 'Ah, if I did but know beyond a doubt that it was Thyself who has spoken to me, it would not be so difficult to lay these things before my superiors.' He answered me: “It is for them and not for you to make this examination. To who should I address Myself it not to a Carmelite, whose very vocation enjoins upon her the duty of unceasingly glorifying My Name.”  (Dorothy Scallan, The Holy Man of Tours, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, 1990, pp. 119-123.)

Sister Mary of Saint Peter was given the following revelation by Our Lord on March 29, 1847, which was Monday of Holy Week that year:

The Saviour enjoins Sister Mary through her prayers and the instruments of His Passion to make was on the Communists who are the enemies of the Church and her Christ. He tells her that whereas the weapons of the enemy inflict death, the weapons of His Passion restore life. This revelation strikes an unprecedented peak stressing the militancy of the Church on earth, as it demonstrates the power of the individual soul to forge her WILL against the powers of evil through prayer. It must be so for, after all the battle real and actual which goes on between the Church and hell is not a battle of guns and mobilized divisions in uniform, for Satan has none of these at his disposal, but he employs only his formidable WILL of evil to spread disaster. Coping with this force, the Church's militant members forge their WILLS of good, through Christ, to defeat the powers of the infernal regions.

Today after Holy Communion our Lord gave me a new mission, one which ought to frighten me, yet since I know I am nothing but a weak instrument in His hands, I am perfectly at peace.

Our Lord commanded me to make war on the Communists because He said they were the enemies of the Church and of her Christ. He told me also that most of these wolfish men who are now Communists had been born in the Church whose bitter enemies they now openly declare themselves to be. Then our Saviour added:

“I have already told you that I hold you in My hands as an arrow. I now want to hurl this arrow against My enemies. To arm you for the battle ahead, I give you the weapons of My Passion, that is My Cross which these enemies dread and also the other instruments of My tortures. Go forward to meet these foes with the artlessness of a child, and the bravery of a courageous soldier. Receive for this mission the benediction of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

Having been favored with this communication, I frequently call on the Blessed Virgin to be the depository of these sacred weapons which her Divine Son gave me since she is called the Tower of David on which hang a thousand bucklers.

Since our Saviour continued to grant me further lights on this subject I now said to Him. “Lord, give me a skillful hand and train me to use well these weapons which You have entrusted to me for the combat. “To this our Lord answered:

“The weapons of My enemies inflict death but My weapons give life.” 

"Following is the prayer I frequently recite to fulfill the mission entrusted to me:

Eternal Father, I offer You the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and all the other instruments of His Holy Passion, that You may put division in the camp of Your enemies, for as Your Beloved Son has said. 'A kingdom divided against itself shall fall.'” (The Golden Arrow: The Autobiography of and Revelation of Sister Mary of Saint Peter (1816-1848): On Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, edited by Dorothy Scallan and translated by Father Emeric B. Scallan, S.T.B., published originally by William Frederick Press, New York, New York, 1954, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2012, pp.  202-203.).

As has been demonstrated amply since March 13, 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is among the world’s foremost transgressors of the Ten Commandments, for which he has as much contempt as Martin Luther himself.

The conciliar authorities have used their usurped offices to will the spread of that which our true popes have declared to be evil by condemning it solemnly. They have been and continue to be singular instruments of perdition to divide believing Catholics against themselves. Alas, their kingdom of evil shall fall, and it is doing so right now in many ways.

It was eight days later, on Easter Tuesday, April 6, 1847, that Saint Mary of Saint Peter was visited by Our Lord again:

Sister Mary of St. Peter is encouraged by our Lord to continue her valiant battle against Communism and she is promised the reward of Heaven itself for her faithful conduct in this war

I have entered the arena to battle with the enemies of God, and since I am engaged in this war under the banner of obedience, if I may so express myself, my soul is at peace. Fighting under this banner I feel safe, and I no longer fear the demon. Our Lord has given me the grace to launch an offensive warfare.

Today, after Holy Communion, He inspired me to be brave in the encounter, promising me that as a reward for my faithful conduct in these battles, He would give me a Cross of Honor, which would have the power of opening Heaven to me. He also promised me the gold of charity by which I understood that I would be granted all the graces needed to triumph patiently and lovingly over any obstacles that would come my way.

Have fought the enemies of God during these past three solemn feast days (The three days of Holy Week) and that with all my strength, I must explain that since I have uttered many imprecations against them, I am not somewhat saddened for having done so. I well know that the holy King David has done as much, as for example in his Psalm 108 (They have spoken against me with a lying tongue; and they have attacked me without cause. Let these my accusers be converted with shame and let them be wrapt with the mantle of their own confusion. From PSALM 108) yet I am not certain whether the same course is allowed me. Nevertheless, everything that I said during the prayer was inspired by our Lord, and should it turn out that I have been mistaken, I will, of course, do this no more. The following is the formula of my militant procedure.

I begin by placing my soul in our Lord's hands, after which I beg Him to use my soul as He would a bow, urging Him to bend it so that the arrows would fly directly towards his enemies.

After doing this I proceed to enter the battlefield, fortified with the Cross and the other instruments of our Lord's tortures as my weapons of war, leveling their infinite conquering power against the military entrenchments of the enemy, in the way He has taught me. Then I say:

“May God arise and let His enemies be scattered and let all those who hate Him flee before His Face!

“May the thrice Holy Name of God overthrow all of their plans!

“May the thrice Holy Name of the Living God split them up by disagreements!

“May the terrible Name of the God of Eternity stamp out all their godlessness!

Repeating other similar ejaculations, I continue to level these rounds of ammunition at God's enemies, and after I have beaten them down I add:

“Lord, I do not desire the death of the sinner, but I want him to be converted and to live. 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.'”

Feeling disturbed about uttering these imprecations, I sometimes worry but I must make it clear that never do I have the intention to wish evil to the enemy. I desire only to oppose their wickedness and their passions. In short, what I want is to kill not them but the “evil spirit” within them.

Such is the spiritual exercise which I perform without any mental effort and with great ease, because I simply allow myself to be led by the grace given me, but I fully believe that there is someone very anxious to alarm me, this being the general of the opposing side, the devil. (The Golden Arrow: The Autobiography of and Revelation of Sister Mary of Saint Peter (1816-1848): On Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, edited by Dorothy Scallan and translated by Father Emeric B. Scallan, S.T.B., published originally by William Frederick Press, New York, New York, 1954, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2012, pp.  206-208.)

Our Lord was not only referring to the revolutionaries at work in Europe at the time. He, Who is outside of time and space, was referring also to all subsequent revolutionaries, including those of conciliarism, a and He wants us to kill the evil spirit that is within them by making use of the Holy Face devotion as best as is possible.

A further motivation for us to do so can be found in a revelation given to Saint Peter of Saint Mary on October 4, 1846, that indicated much worse chastisements lay ahead, especially for the performance of unnecessary work Sundays:

Herewith our Saviour complains of the desecration of Sundays and He urges Sister Mary to pray for the cessation of forbidden labor on Sundays. Later He also threatens to punish the world for these crimes against God's Majesty not by the elements but by the “malice of revolutionary men.”

 Several months have passed since I experienced anything extraordinary. Our Lord during this time of trial, deigned however to purify my soul by great interior sufferings, as all consciousness of His Presence was withdrawn from me.

But on the morning, as soon as I had received Holy Communion, He intimated to me that He wanted to keep me at His feet and I obeyed. He then made me hear these sad and frightful words:

“My justice is irritated on account of the profanations of the holy day of Sunday. I see a victim.”

I answered, “Lord, You know that my superior have given me permission to abandon myself into Your divine hands. Therefore do with me whatever may please You, although, I must indeed add, 'What am I, anyhow?' Oh Lord,” I further said to Him, “is it indeed You Yourself Who speaks in these revelations to me?”

Our Lord answered me:

“You shall not remain long in this doubt.”

Thereupon it seemed to me that our Saviour accepted the Act of self-oblation which I had just made Him, and He told me that He would in a new way take possession of my whole being, so that in a certain manner He Himself would suffer within me, in order to appease the Divine Justice, aroused by reason of the desecration of Sunday.

After that our Lord commanded me to receive Holy Communion every Sunday for these three particular intentions:

1st In a spirit of atoning for all forbidden works done on Sundays, which as holy days are to be sanctified.

2nd To appease Divine Justice which was on the very verge of striking on account of the profanations of holy days.

3rd To implore the conversion of those sinners who desecrate Sundays, and to succeed in obtaining the cessation of forbidden Sunday labor.

Following this revelation, our Lord invited me to offer His Holy Face to His Eternal Father as a means of obtaining these gifts of mercy.

Such are the communications which for more than three years I have received from our Lord, all of which are repeatedly directed towards the same end, as our Divine Saviour continues to complain of these two crimes, the profanation of Sundays and the blaspheming of God's Holy Name.

Remark – Soon I received proof of that which He told me in this last communication when He said that He would not leave me long in doubt as to whether it was indeed He who foretold to me what chastisements of God's Justice would be felt because of the profanation of Sunday. For there occurred so frightful and so unprecedented an overflowing of the River Loire as had not been seen in centuries. The whole city of Tours was in imminent danger as terror and confusion gripped the citizens. Everywhere people acknowledged that an Omnipotent Hand was wielding the elements at will and even those persons who professed hardly any religious belief whatsoever now openly admitted that it was only through a miracle that the whole city of Tours did not perish. But the real case that provoked God to send this punishment on the city was the profanation of Sunday, as our Lord Himself told me, yet this principal fact was and continues to be ignored.

But what filled my soul with sadness was an interior light which our Lord granted me by which I saw that God's Justice was preparing to send us still other chastisements. Our Lord communicated to me that this time He would use as the instruments of punishment, not the elements, but “the malice of revolutionary men.” (The Golden Arrow: The Autobiography of and Revelation of Sister Mary of Saint Peter (1816-1848): On Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, edited by Dorothy Scallan and translated by Father Emeric B. Scallan, S.T.B., published originally by William Frederick Press, New York, New York, 1954, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2012, pp. 175-177.)

This is interesting when one considers the fact that Our Lady herself had wept over the profanation of Sundays when she had appeared to Maximim Giraud and Melanie Calvat on September 19, 1846, just fifteen days before Our Lord spoke to Sister Mary of Saint Peter.  We have much work to do to make reparation for our own sins, no less those of others, including the conciliar revolutionaries, and it is thus urgent to make use of the means given to us in these latter times to do so.

Communism may seem to have the upper hand now here in the United States and in many places in once proudly Catholic Europe, to say nothing of Red China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, North Korea, and a few other places in the world where it represses the masses formally.

However, calling to mind the courage of Pope Pius XII in denouncing Communism and defending Catholics suffering under it, we call upon Our Lady in her Most Holy Rosary to fortify us in our resolution to spread public devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. May it be our privilege to be as courageous as Saints Cosmas and Damian, whose feast we celebrate today, Tuesday, September 27, 2022, and as were the Catholics who suffered under Communism during the pontificate of the Holy Father who defended them with valor and pattern above as we seek to be holy with the help of Our Lady so that we can ready whenever we might be called upon to defend the Holy Faith and, of course, to defend against the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil so that we can save our souls and gain an eternal crown of glory in Heaven and be as close to Our Lady there as we have striven to be as members of the Church Militant on earth.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Vivat Christus RexViva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

 

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

Saints Cosmas and Damian, pray for us.

Appendix A

Devotions to the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ

(As found at:  Holy Face Devotion.)

PRAYERS OF REPARATION TO THE HOLY FACE OF JESUS

As requested by Our Lord Jesus Christ. These prayers are to be said on Sundays and the Holy Days of Obligation, publicly (if possible), and preferably before the Blessed Sacrament or before the picture of the Holy Face.

    Dear Lord, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, I (we) offer You these prayers in reparation for the sins which offend God the most in these modern times--the sins of BLASPHEMY and the PROFANATION OF SUNDAY and Your Holy Days of Obligation:

One Our Father, Hail Mary,
and Glory Be To The Father

THE "GOLDEN ARROW" PRAYER
dictated by Our Lord to Sister Mary of St. Peter

May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and unutterable Name of God be always praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.

After receiving this prayer, Sister Mary of St. Peter was given a vision in which she saw the Sacred Heart of Jesus delightfully wounded by this "Golden Arrow", as torrents of graces streamed from It far the conversion of sinners.
 

LITANY OF THE HOLY FACE OF JESUS

    I salute Thee, I adore Thee and I love Thee, O adorable Face of Jesus, my Beloved, noble Seal of the Divinity! Outraged anew by blasphemers. I offer Thee, through the heart of Thy blessed Mother, the worship of all the Angels and Saints, most humbly beseeching Thee to repair and renew in me and in all men Thy Image disfigured by sin.

    O adorable Face which was adored, with profound respect, by Mary and Joseph when they saw Thee for the first time, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which did ravish with joy, in the stable of Bethlehem, the Angels, the shepherds and the magi, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which did transpierce with a dart of love in the Temple, the saintly old man Simeon and the prophetess Anna, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which filled with admiration the Doctors of the law when Thou didst appear in the Temple at the age of twelve years, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which possesses beauty always ancient and always new, have mercy...
    O adorable Face which is the masterpiece of the Holy Ghost, in which the Eternal Father is well pleased, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which is the ineffable mirror of the divine perfection, have mercy on us.

    Adorable Face of Jesus which was so mercifully bowed down on the Cross, on the day of Thy Passion, for the salvation of the world! Once more today in pity bend down towards us poor sinners. Cast upon us a glance of compassion and give us Thy peace.

     O adorable Face which became brilliant like the sun and radiant with glory, on the Mountain of Tabor, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which wept and was troubled at the tomb of Lazarus, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which was rendered sad at the sight of Jerusalem, and shed tears on that ungrateful city, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which was bowed down to the ground in the Garden of Olives, and covered with confusion for our sins, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which was covered with the sweat of blood, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which was struck by a vile servant, covered with a veil of shame, and profaned by the sacrilegious hands of Thy enemies, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which by Its divine glance, wounded the heart of St. Peter with a dart of sorrow and love, have mercy on us.

    Be merciful to us, O my God! Do not reject our prayers, when in the midst of our afflictions, we call upon Thy Holy Name and seek with love and confidence Thy adorable Face.

    O adorable Face which was washed and anointed by Mary and the holy women and covered with a shroud, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which was all resplendent with glory and beauty on the day of the Resurrection, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which is hidden in the Eucharist, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which will appear at the end of time in the clouds with great power and great majesty, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which will make sinners tremble, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which will fill the just with joy for all eternity, have mercy on us.
    O adorable Face which merits all our reverence, our homage and our adoration, have mercy on us.
    O Lord, show us Thy Face, and we shall be saved!
    O Lord, show us Thy Face, and we shall be saved!
    O Lord, show us Thy Face, and we shall be saved!

Note: The Litany of the Holy Face above, and the same Litany in our pamphlets, is the abridged version, as the full version is quite lengthy. Here is the full-length Litany of the Holy Face.

PRAYER TO OFFER THE HOLY FACE OF JESUS TO GOD THE FATHER TO APPEASE HIS JUSTICE AND DRAW DOWN MERCY UPON US

    Almighty and Eternal Father, since it has pleased Our Divine Savior to reveal to mankind in modern times the power residing in His Holy Face, we now avail ourselves of this Treasure in our great need. Since our Savior Himself promised that by offering to You His Holy Face disfigured in the Passion we can procure the settlement of all the affairs of our household, and that nothing whatsoever will be refused to us, we now come before Your throne.

    Eternal Father, turn away Your angry gaze from our guilty people whose face has become unsightly in Your eyes. Look instead upon the Face of Your Beloved Son; for this is the Face of Him in whom You are well pleased. We now offer You His Holy Face covered with blood, sweat, dust, spittle and shame, in reparation for the worst crimes of our age, which are atheism, blasphemy, and the desecration of Your holy days. We thus hope to appease Your anger justly provoked against us. The All-Merciful Advocate opens His mouth to plead our cause; listen to His cries, behold His tears, O God, and through the merits of His Holy Face hearken to Him when He intercedes for us poor miserable sinners. (As found at: Holy Face Devotion.)

Appendix B

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian

Honor the physician for the need thou hast of him: for the most High hath created him. For all healing is from God, and he shall receive gifts of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be praised. The most High hath created medicines out of the earth, and a wise man will not abhor them. Was not bitter water made sweet with wood? The virtue of these things is come to the knowledge of hem, and the most High hath given knowledge to men, that he may be honored in his wonders. By these he shall cure and shall allay their pains, and of these the apothecary shall make sweet confections, and shall make up ointments of health, and of his works there shall be no end. For the peace of God is over the face of the earth. My son, in thy sickness neglect not thyself, but pray to the Lord, and he shall heal thee. Turn away from sin and order thy hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all offense. Give a sweet savor, and a memorial of fine flour, and make a fat offering, and then give place to the physician. For the Lord created him: and let him not depart from thee, for his works are necessary. For there is a time when thou must fall into their hands: and they shall beseech the Lord, that he would prosper what they give for ease and remedy, for their conversation. These words of the Wise Man are appropriate for this feast. The Church, obeying the inspired injunction, honors the medical profession in the persons of Cosmas and Damian, who not only, like many others (Dom A. M. Fournier, Notices sur les saints médecins), sanctified themselves in that career; but far beyond all others, demonstrated to the world how grand a part the physician may play in Christian society.

Cosmas and Damian had been Christians from their childhood. The study of Hippocrates and Galen developed their love of God, whose invisible perfections they admired reflected in the magnificences of creation, and especially in the human body his palace and his temple. To them, science was a hymn of praise to their Creator, and the exercise of their art a sacred ministry; they served God in his suffering members, and watched over his human sanctuary, to preserve it from injury or to repair its ruins. Such a life of religious charity was fittingly crowned by the perfect sacrifice of martyrdom.

East and West vied with each other in paying homage to the Anargyres, as our Saints were called on account of their receiving no fees for their services. Numerous churches were dedicated to them. The emperor Justinian embellished and fortified the obscure town of Cyrus out of reverence for their sacred relics there preserved; and about the same time, Pope Felix IV built a church in their honor in the Roman Forum, thus substituting the memory of the twin martyrs for that of the less happy brothers Romulus and Remus. Not long before this, St. Benedict had dedicated to Saints Cosmas and Damian his first monastery at Subiaco, now known as St. Scholastica’s. But Rome rendered the highest of all honors to the holy Arabian brethren, by placing their names, in preference to so many thousands of her own heroes, in the solemn litanies and on the sacred diptychs of the Mass.

In the middle ages, the physicians and surgeons banded together into confraternities, whose object was the sanctification of the members by common prayer, charity towards the destitute, and the accomplishment of all the duties of their important vocation for the greater glory of God and the greater good of suffering humanity. The Society of Sts. Luke, Cosmas and Damian has now undertaken in France the renewal of these happy traditions.

The following is the Church’s account of the two brothers:

The brother Cosmas and Damian were Arabians of noble extraction, born in the town of Ægæ. They were physicians; and during the reign of Diocletian and Maximian, healed even incurable maladies no less by Christ’s assistance than by their knowledge of medicine. The prefect Lysias, being informed of their religion, ordered them to be brought before him, and questioned them on their faith and their manner of life. They openly declared that they were Christians, and that the Christian faith is necessary to salvation; whereupon Lysias commanded them to adore the gods, threatening them, if they refused, with torture and a cruel death.

But as the prefect saw his threats were in vain: “Bind their hands and feet,” he cried, “and torture them with the utmost cruelty.” His commands were executed, but Cosmas and Damian remained firm. They were then thrown, chained as they were, into the sea, but came out safe and loosed from their bonds. The prefect attributing this to magical acts ordered them to prison. The next day, he commanded them to be led forth and thrown on a burning pile, but the flame refused to touch them. Finally, after several other cruel tortures, they were beheaded; and thus confessing Jesus Christ, they won the palm of martyrdom.

In you, O illustrious brethren, was fulfilled this saying of the Wise Man: The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be praised. The great ones, in whose sight you are exalted, are the princes of the heavenly hierarchies, witnessing today the homage paid to you by the Church militant. The glory that surrounds your heads is the glory of God himself, of that bountiful king, who rewards your former disinterestedness by bestowing upon you his own blessed life.

In the bosom of divine love, your charity cannot wax cold; help us, then, and heal the sick who confidently implore your assistance. Preserve the health of God’s children so that they may fulfill their obligations to the world, may courageously bear the light yoke of the Church’s precepts. Bless those physicians who are faithful to their baptism, and who seek your aid; and increase the number of such.

See how the study of medicine now so often leads astray into the paths of materialism and fatalism, to the great detriment of science and humanity. It is false to assert that simple nature is the explanation of suffering and death; and unfortunate are those whose physicians regard them as mere flesh and blood. Even the pagan school took a loftier view than that; and it was surely a higher ideal that inspired you to exercise your art with such religious reverence. By the virtue of your glorious death, O witnesses to the Lord, obtain for our sickly society a return to the faith, to the remembrance of God, and to that piety which is profitable to all things and all men, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian, September 27.)

 

[Droleskey note: Jorge Mario Bergoglio would have urged Saints Cosmas and Damian to “dialogue” with the prefect.]