Living in A Supremely Absurd World

We have reached such a point of absurdity in a world shaped by the anti-Incarnational principles of Modernity that contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined for the corruption of the grave, having first arrogated unto themselves the “authority” to “decide” matters that exist in the very  nature of things, can now determine now to “balance” conflicts between those dissent from their determinations and those who are the beneficiaries of them.

That is, having established in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, the Feast of Saint William the Abbot, a nonexistent “right” for people of the same gender to “marry,” United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony MacLeod Kennedy, a Catholic in “good standing” in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite his repeated support for the surgical execution of children in their mothers’ wombs as a matter of “settled” constitutional principle, had to find a way three years later in the case of to accommodate business owners who object on religious grounds to the absurdity and perversity of “gay marriage” without creating a blanket “right” to “discriminate” against practitioners of the sin of Sodom and its related perverse vices.

Lost in all these efforts to deal with false conflicts over absurdities that bring down the wrath of God on men and their nations is the simple fact that these very conflicts have been engendered by the teleology of the falsehoods known as “freedom of conscience” and “freedom of religion” that are taken for granted as the twin foundations of modern nations. Such conflicts are entirely the result of a world premised upon the belief that men can pursue genuine justice and live in a stable society absent the Social Reign of Christ the King and the guiding hand of Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls.

Consider the absolute absurdity of Justice Kennedy’s summary of the “conflict” created by the “right” he championed by Obergefell v. Hodges three years ago as found in Masterpiece Cakebakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, June 4, 2018, noting that I will interject at various points:

Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.

For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts. (Masterpiece Cakemakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.)

Interjection Number One:

There is no such thing as a “gay person.” There are only sinners who base their human self-identification on the basis of their proclivity to commit sins of unnatural vice with persons of the same gender.

There are no such things as “gay couples.” There are only sinners who have chosen to practice their perversity together, either for a short or longer period of time, and who demand that others not only recognize the nonexistent legitimacy of their sinful lives but to refrain from any criticism of them.

This calls to mind once again the following words of Saint Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans:

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1: 18-32.)

[9] Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers[10] Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6: 9)

[6] And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. [7] As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. [8] In like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty[9] When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee. [10] But these men blaspheme whatever things they know not: and what things soever they naturally know, like dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted.  (Jude 1 6-10.)

Obviously, Anthony MacLeod Kennedy and his fellow Catholics on the Supreme Court of the United States of America (Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) have been trained to put aside their “private” religious beliefs because of the demands of a secular constitution that foresaw and celebrated the existence of a pluralistic society that concedes nothing to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, especially as they explicated by the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Thus, we are left with a situation in which jurists must find “rational” grounds to justify an alleged act of discrimination because of religious convictions while not infringing upon the “rights” of perverse sinners who are now considered to constitute a legally protected category of citizens.

One can see the difficulties of finding such grounds in the next excerpt from the following single paragraph of Justice Kennedy’s decision for the Court:

At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. As this Court observed in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. ___ (2015), “[t]he First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 27). Nevertheless, while those religious and philosophical objections are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law. See Newman v. Piggy Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U. S. 400, 402, n. 5 (1968) (per curiam); see also Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 572 (1995) (“Provisions like these are well within the State’s usual power to enact when a legislature has reason to 10 MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMM’N Opinion of the Court believe that a given group is the target of discrimination, and they do not, as a general matter, violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments”). (Masterpiece Cakemakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.)

Interjection Number Two:

In other words, Anthony MacLeod Kennedy has articulated firm, absolute and unshakeable legal principles that a person with religious objections to the perversity that is “marriage” between people of the same gender is rooted on that bedrock foundation of American jurisprudence: It all depends on what we, judges, say is legal at a particular time. Legal positivism (the belief that something judged to be legal is at the same time morally licit to pursue even the action in question is contrary to the objective standards) reigns supreme at the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Kennedy would contend that a Catholic owner of a hotel or motel could not deny “public accommodations” to sodomite “couples” any more than he could deny them to those who are black, speak Spanish or are from Asia, thus providing a moral equivalence between one’s voluntary decision to sin against God and against nature and the characteristics with which human beings are born. Such a feat is nothing extraordinary Anthony MacLeod Kennedy, who wrote the following in the decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, as he equated the “marital right” to contracept established in Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, with the “right” of a man to “marry” a man and of a woman to “marry” a woman or a mutant to “marry” another mutant or non-mutant of his choice:

A second principle in this Court’s jurisprudence is that the right to marry is fundamental because it supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals. This point was central to Griswold v. Connecticut, which held the Constitution protects the right of married couples to use contraception. 381 U. S., at 485. Suggesting that marriage is a right “older than the Bill of Rights,” Griswold described marriage this way:

“Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.” Id., at 486.

A third basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925); Meyer, 262 U. S., at 399. The Court has recognized these connections by describing the varied rights as a unified whole: “[T]he right to ‘marry, establish a home and bring up children’ is a central part of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause.” Zablocki , 434 U. S., at 384 quoting Meyer, supra , at 399). Under the laws of the several States, some of marriage’s protections for children and families are material. But marriage also confers more profound benefits. By giving recognition and legal structure to their parents’ relationship, marriage allows children “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor, supra, at (slip op., at 23). Marriage also affords the permanency and stability important to children’s best interests. See Brief for Scholars of the Constitutional Rights of Children as Amici Curiae 22–27. (Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.)

As all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted. And hundreds of thousands of children are presently being raised by such couples. See Brief for Gary J. Gates as Amicus Curiae 4. Most States have allowed gays and lesbians to adopt, either as individuals or as couples, and many adopted and foster children have same-sex parents, see id., at 5. This provides powerful confirmation from the law itself that gays and lesbians can create loving, supportive families. Excluding same-sex couples from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry.

Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated through no fault of their own to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples. See Windsor. supra, at ___ (slip op., at 23). (Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.) 

This is what I wrote at the time by way of a rejoinder to Anthony MacLeod Kennedy’s reading of the Constitution of the United States of America in light of “contemporary circumstance”:

Children are to be raised by a father and a mother who seek to educate them in the truths of the Holy Faith as members of the Catholic Church so that they can save their souls and go to Heaven to enjoy the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity. No one “loves” another human being authentically if he does or says anything contrary to that person’s eternal good, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of his immortal soul. Those engaged in perversely sinful lives are disqualified from “adopting” children as their very relationship is unnatural, odious in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, and an abomination to the good of society. Such “couples”

That attorneys representing the states that defended their respective states bans on “gay marriage” conceded the falsehood that “same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes their children” demonstrates once again what happens when one uses naturalism to oppose naturalism: Naturalism wins. No battle to defend faith and morals can be fought on the terms of the adversary, who has done a pretty good job of convincing most people in the “developed” world to reject what is natural and pleasing to God in favor that which is unnatural and an abomination in His sight.

Thus it is that the process of reading the Constitution in light of “contemporary circumstances” has been occurring for a very long time now. It is nothing new at all. We are merely witnessing the end result of the perfection of the document’s inherent degeneracy and the absolute defenselessness of the clearly intended meaning of its own text in the hands of those had grown used to the “demythologization” of Sacred Scripture, first by Protestant “scholars” and then by Modernists in the Catholic Church. If Holy Writ can be deconstructed of its plain meaning, my good readers, then so can every other written document. Why is this so difficult for some of you out there to understand and accept? Stability of constitutional interpretation in a pluralistic nation is as impossible as stability of doctrine in a false church, including, of course, the counterfeit church of conciliarism itself.

It will be impossible to balance claims of religious objections such as those at issue in the case of Masterpiece Cakebakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission on anything other than the shifting arbitrariness of those who believe themselves to be empowered to decide that which is impossible for humans to decide. Even the effort to seek such a “balance” is itself based on the fatally flawed premise that practitioners of sodomy and its related perverse vices have special “rights” that are beyond legal challenge. One can see the depths to which nations must fall when their laws treat the true religion as a matter of indifference, something that Pope Gregory XVI prophesied in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:

13. Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that “there is one God, one faith, one baptism”[16] may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who are not with Christ are against Him,”[17] and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore “without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate.”[18] Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: “He who is for the See of Peter is for me.”[19] A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: “The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?”[20]

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

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

There is no rational or consistent standard by which one can defend the right not to accord special privileges to those who engage in freely chosen acts of perversity once it is conceded that such acts are protected under the cover of the civil law. Masterpiece Cakebakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission did nothing to provide such a standard, which is impossible on its face to establish and maintain, as Associate Justice Anthony MacLeod Kennedy limited the decision itself to the finding that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had shown an overt hostility to religion, thereby prejudicing its decision in favor of the sodomites who had targeted Masterpiece Cakebakers to force the owner, Mr. Jack Phillips, to “bake the ‘wedding’ cake” or face legal consequences:

On July 25, 2014, the Commission met again. This meeting, too, was conducted in public and on the record. On this occasion another commissioner made specific reference to the previous meeting’s discussion but said far more to disparage Phillips’ beliefs. The commissioner stated: 

“I would also like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be—I mean, we—we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.” Tr. 11–12. 

To describe a man’s faith as “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use” is to disparage his religion in at least two distinct ways: by describing it as despicable, and also by characterizing it as merely rhetorical—something insubstantial and even insincere. The commissioner even went so far as to compare Phillips’ invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. This sentiment is inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s antidiscrimination law—a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation. The record shows no objection to these comments from other commissioners. And the later state-court ruling reviewing the Commission’s decision did not mention those comments, much less express concern with their content. Nor were the comments by the commissioners disavowed in the briefs filed in this Court. For these reasons, the Court cannot avoid the conclusion that these statements cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case. Members of the Court have disagreed on the question whether statements made by lawmakers may properly be taken into account in determining whether a law intentionally discriminates on the basis of religion. See Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 540– 542 (1993); id., at 558 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). 

In this case, however, the remarks were made in a very different context—by an adjudicatory body deciding a particular case. Another indication of hostility is the difference in treatment between Phillips’ case and the cases of other bakers who objected to a requested cake on the basis of conscience and prevailed before the Commission. As noted above, on at least three other occasions the Civil Rights Division considered the refusal of bakers to create cakes with images that conveyed disapproval of same-sex marriage, along with religious text. Each time, the Division found that the baker acted lawfully in refusing service. It made these determinations because, in the Cite as: 584 U. S. ____ (2018) 15 Opinion of the Court words of the Division, the requested cake included “wording and images [the baker] deemed derogatory,” Jack v. Gateaux, Ltd., Charge No. P20140071X, at 4; featured “language and images [the baker] deemed hateful,” Jack v. Le Bakery Sensual, Inc., Charge No. P20140070X, at 4; or displayed a message the baker “deemed as discriminatory, Jack v. Azucar Bakery, Charge No. P20140069X, at 4. The treatment of the conscience-based objections at issue in these three cases contrasts with the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ objection. The Commission ruled against Phillips in part on the theory that any message the requested wedding cake would carry would be attributed to the customer, not to the baker. Yet the Division did not address this point in any of the other cases with respect to the cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism(Masterpiece Cakemakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.)

Some have applauded Justice Kennedy for calling out the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's hostility to religion and the double-standard that its commissioners applied to Mr. Phillips and to bakers who refused to bake cakes with messages disapproving of sodomite “marriages.” Such applause is unmerited as it is not a “civil right” before God to commit the sin of Sodom and/or to demand that others use their professional skills and expertise to craft items with messages that violate their religious beliefs.

Anthony MacLeod Kennedy’s intellectual gymnastics in the case of Masterpiece Cakemakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission call to mind how he, a firm supporter of the nonexistent “right” to slaughter innocent human beings by surgical means in their mothers’ womb that was enunciated in Roe v Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, calls to mind how he justified the partial ban on crushed skull abortions in the case of Carhart v. Gonzales, April 17, 2007. Kennedy justified his support for the act, which was signed into law by President George Walker Bush in 2003, on the grounds that there were other methods, incuding a hysterotomy, by which a baby could be butchered in his mothers’ wombs with legal impunity. In other words, the argument Kennedy found that the partial ban on crushed skull abortions did not interfere with a woman’s “right” to kill her baby in last trimester. This is what he said at the time:

D&E and intact D&E are not the only second-trimester abortion methods. Doctors also may abort a fetus through medical induction. The doctor medicates the woman to induce labor, and contractions occur to deliver the fetus. Induction, which unlike D&E should occur in a hospital, can last as little as 6 hours but can take longer than 48. It accounts for about five percent of second-trimester abortions before 20 weeks of gestation and 15 percent of those after 20 weeks. Doctors turn to two other methods of second-trimester abortion, hysterotomy and hysterectomy, only in emergency situations because they carry increased risk of complications. In a hysterotomy, as in a cesarean section, the doctor removes the fetus by making an incision through the abdomen and uterine wall to gain access to the uterine cavity. A hysterectomy requires the removal of the entire uterus. These two procedures represent about .07% of second-trimester abortions. Nat. Abortion Federation, 330 F. Supp. 2d, at 467; Planned Parenthood, supra, at 962-963. (Text of the Court's Opinion; see also An Illusion of a Victory.) 

This is pretty much what Kennedy did in the Masterpiece Cakemakers case as the established “right” remains unthreatened and the Constitution’s “free exercise of religion” clause remains undisturbed. The only thing that Kennedy has accomplished in the current case is to demand “religious neutrality” from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, but such neutrality is of the devil himself, who is the mastermind of the anti-Incarnational world in which we live.

This is all utter and complete insanity. Insanity. This insanity is so hard to stomach as hostility to the true religion characterized the beliefs of many of the American founding fathers (see appendix below and, in case you are unware of it,  Converse in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics.)

Sure, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was hostile to Mr. Phillips’s religious beliefs and to “religion” in general. It is no accident, though, that Colorado has the ninth highest percentage of citizens who are not affiliated with any religion, twenty-nine percent, including four percent who are open atheists and another nine percent who are agnostics (see Pew Forum on Religion; another poll indicates that thirty-nine percent of Coloradans are non-religions, see Gallup Poll on Religious Affliliation), and the fact that hostility to religion, no less the true religion, is to be found in governmental bureaucracies and on various commissions is the direct, unavoidable result of the nation’s religiously indifferentist founding that provides room for any religion—or no religion at all—in the “public square.” Practical atheism is the logical result of religious indifferentism, something that Pope Leo XIII pointed out in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

Yet it is that men, having conceded nonexistent “rights” to those whose sinful acts bring down the wrath of God on themselves and their nations, find themselves trying to act in rational terms in order decide what it is or is not an infringement on the very thing that got us into this mess to begin with, “religious liberty,” which itself is but the long-term product of the Protestant Revolution and its misbegotten stepchild, Judeo-Masonry. This is nothing other sophistry of the most insane order.

Consider how Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, a champion of the heresy that is religious liberty, had to turn himself into a veritable Pretzel Mary to say that respecting the religious freedom of Jack Phillips does not interfere with the “right” of sodomites to be respected:

This isn’t a case where the Commission selfconsciously announced a change in its legal rule in all public accommodation cases. Nor is this a case where the Commission offered some persuasive reason for its discrimination that might survive strict scrutiny. Instead, as the Court explains, it appears the Commission wished to condemn Mr. Phillips for expressing just the kind of “irrational” or “offensive . . . message” that the bakers in the first case refused to endorse. Ante, at 16. Many may agree with the Commission and consider Mr. Phillips’s religious beliefs irrational or offensive. Some may believe he misinterprets the teachings of his faith. And, to be sure, this Court has held same-sex marriage a matter of constitutional right and various States have enacted laws that preclude discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But it is also true that no bureaucratic judgment condemning a sincerely held religious belief as “irrational” or “offensive” will ever survive strict scrutiny under the First Amendment. In this country, the place of secular officials isn’t to sit in judgment of religious beliefs, but only to protect their free exercise. Just as it is the “proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence” that we protect speech that we hate, it must be the proudest boast of our free exercise jurisprudence that we protect religious beliefs that we find offensive. See Matal v. Tam, 582 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 25) (citing United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U. S. 644, 655 (1929) (Holmes, J., dissenting)). Popular religious views are easy enough to defend. It is in protecting unpopular religious beliefs that we prove this country’s commitment to serving as a refuge for religious freedom. See Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, supra, at 547; Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707, 715–716 (1981); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 223–224 (1972); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 308–310 (1940). (Masterpiece Cakemakers v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.)

Herein lies the nub of the matter, my good and almost invisible readers: The mere fact that the Supreme Court of the United States of America has put its constitutional imprimatur on a moral abomination does nothing to change the fact that what is odious in the sight of God is harmful to men and the good order of their nations. Moreover, there is no such thing as “offensive religious convictions” as there is only one true religion, Catholicism, whose teachings are from the hand of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, and provide order and peace within the souls of fallen men.

While it is true that we live in pluralistic land and that we have to do the best that is possible under the circumstances, it is erroneous to concede as a matter of principle that false religions an unfettered “freedom of conscience” represent an advancement in the course of human civilization. Pope Leo XIII explained in Immortale Dei that whatever is harmful to our salvation has no right to be brought before the eye of man, noting as well that it is a fatal proposition to believe that one can exclude the true religion from the course of public business:

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 passport 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 the business of life, from the making of 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.)

It is a grave and fatal error to exclude Holy Mother Church from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth and from influencing the whole direction of domestic society. The Western world is on a death march from which, humanly speaking, there is no retreat. This is all a preparation for the coming of Antichrist to take control of a world that has been torn apart by the proliferation of sin and error by those who believe that men can make their lives better without Christ the King and His true Church.

To be sure, Pope Leo XIII made the proper distinctions in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888, between tolerating various evils in the modern civil state as opposed to supporting their nonexistent “right” to proliferate at will. His Holiness also deplored the deplorable state that befalls nations when their laws (and, by extension, its people) accept increasingly higher doses of evil as normal and natural:

Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue. In the government of States it is not forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the world; and, as the authority of man is powerless to prevent every evil, it has (as St. Augustine says) to overlook and leave unpunished many things which are punished, and rightly, by Divine Providence. But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, "neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good.'' This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil.

But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind. One thing, however, remains always true -- that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.

And as to tolerance, it is surprising how far removed from the equity and prudence of the Church are those who profess what is called liberalism. For, in allowing that boundless license of which We have spoken, they exceed all limits, and end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty. And because the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and the unerring teacher of morals, is forced utterly to reprobate and condemn tolerance of such an abandoned and criminal character, they calumniate her as being wanting in patience and gentleness, and thus fail to see that, in so doing, they impute to her as a fault what is in reality a matter for commendation. But, in spite of all this show of tolerance, it very often happens that, while they profess themselves ready to lavish liberty on all in the greatest profusion, they are utterly intolerant toward the Catholic Church, by refusing to allow her the liberty of being herself free. (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.)

This is exactly what has happened over the course of time in the United States of America, and it has happened in large measure because, for the first time in the history of the Church, Catholics made their accommodations to a hostile environment rather than to plant the seeds for the conversion of their fellow citizens and their nations. These accommodations, which had the support of most of the American bishops in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries despite the warnings given by Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1894, and Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, received the official sanction and “blessing” of the bishops at the “Second” Vatican Council and have served as the foundation of the conciliar rapprochement with the civil state of Modernity. (For another iteration of this point, which has been a repeated theme of my writing in the past twenty-five years, see Forge and Anvil: Catholics Failed in America, part three. No, the judgments expressed on this site are not solitary.)

A world that is founded in a rebellion against the Social Reign of Christ the King winds up demonstrating characteristics that Pope Pius XI noted were present fully four years after the end of World War at the end of the second decade of the Twentieth Century:

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

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

23. The same effects which result from these evils among individuals may likewise be expected among nations. "From whence are wars and contentions among you?" asks the Apostle St. James. "Are they not hence from your concupiscences, which war in your members?" (James iv, 1, 2)

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 eighty-eight 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.)

As we know, Modernity itself is the problem. We live in a supremely absurd world.

The world in which we live, born of the Protestant Revolution and the subsequent triumph of naturalism in all of its Judeo-Masonic guises, is collapsing  because of its refusal to acknowledge the Word Who was made Flesh in His Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost and to submit in all that pertains to the good of souls to His true Church. It is really very simple to understand. Nations must fall into the abyss when Christ the King reigneth not over men and their nations.

We must be champions of the Sacred Heart of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christand Our Lady, she who is our Immaculate Queen. We must champions of the Catholic Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal, champions of the truth that Catholicism is the and only foundation of personal and social order. Those who disagree do so at the peril to the nation they say they love but for which they have a false sense of nationalistic pride that impedes her conversion to the true Faith, which is what Our Lord Himself mandates for each nation on the face of this earth.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Viva Cristo ReyVivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

 

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

Appendix

A Founding Hatred for Catholicism

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. (President John Adams: "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America," 1787-1788)

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away {with} all this artificial scaffolding…" (11 April, 1823, John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, II, 594).

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821)

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, quoted in 200 Years of Disbelief, by James Hauck)

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."—James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr„ April I, 1774

". . . Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest."—James Madison, spoken at the Virginia convention on ratification of the Constitution, June 1778

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."—-James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance," addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December, 1813.)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weigthman, June 24, 1826, ten days before Jefferson's death. This letter is quoted in its entirety in Dr. Paul C. Peterson’s now out-of-print Readings in American Democracy. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall-Hunt, 1979, pp. 28-29.)