Clothes Do Not Make Any Man a True and Legitimate Successor of Saint Peter, part one

As I have written to several people in the past four days, having now read Robert Prevost's initial "homily," I can say that "Pope Leo XIV" is going to be the most dangerous of all the conciliar "Petrine Ministers." Although he used conciliarspeak in many places, Prevost actually spoke about holiness and salvation, something that I do not recall either Ratzinger or Bergoglio ever mentioning in such direct terms. The adversary is going to use this man, who is a true believer in the conciliar agenda, to mix truth with error as never before and to prove once again that Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies, an admixture of truth and error.

Take a look at “Pope” Leo XIV’s homily below to see the basis for my comment just above:

I will begin with a word in English, and the rest is in Italian. But I want to repeat the words from the responsorial Psalm: “I will sing a new song to the Lord, because he has done marvels.”

And indeed, not just with me but with all of us. My brother cardinals, as we celebrate this morning, I invite you to recognize the marvels that the Lord has done, the blessings that the Lord continues to pour out on all of us through the ministry of Peter.

You have called me to carry that cross, and to be blessed with that mission, and I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me, as we continue as a Church, as a community of friends of Jesus, as believers to announce the good news, to announce the Gospel.

[Continuing in Italian] “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). In these words, Peter, asked by the Master, together with the other disciples, about his faith in him, expressed the patrimony that the Church, through the apostolic succession, has preserved, deepened, and handed on for 2,000 years.

Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God: the one Savior who alone reveals the face of the Father.

In him, God, in order to make himself close and accessible to men and women, revealed himself to us in the trusting eyes of a child, in the lively mind of a young person, and in the mature features of a man (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22), finally appearing to his disciples after the Resurrection with his glorious body. He thus showed us a model of human holiness that we can all imitate, together with the promise of an eternal destiny that transcends all our limits and abilities.

Peter, in his response, understands both of these things: the gift of God and the path to follow in order to allow himself to be changed by that gift. They are two inseparable aspects of salvation entrusted to the Church to be proclaimed for the good of the human race. Indeed, they are entrusted to us, who were chosen by him before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs (cf. Jer 1:5), reborn in the waters of Baptism and, surpassing our limitations and with no merit of our own, brought here and sent forth from here, so that the Gospel might be proclaimed to every creature (cf. Mk 16:15).

In a particular way, God has called me by your election to succeed the Prince of the Apostles, and has entrusted this treasure to me so that, with his help, I may be its faithful administrator (cf. 1 Cor 4:2) for the sake of the entire mystical Body of the Church. He has done so in order that she may be ever more fully a city set on a hill (cf. Rev 21:10), an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world. And this, not so much through the magnificence of her structures or the grandeur of her buildings – like the monuments among which we find ourselves – but rather through the holiness of her members. For we are the people whom God has chosen as his own, so that we may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light (cf. 1 Pet 2:9).

Peter, however, makes his profession of faith in reply to a specific question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Mt 16:13). The question is not insignificant. It concerns an essential aspect of our ministry, namely, the world in which we live, with its limitations and its potential, its questions and its convictions.

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” If we reflect on the scene we are considering, we might find two possible answers, which characterize two different attitudes. 

First, there is the world’s response. Matthew tells us that this conversation between Jesus and his disciples takes place in the beautiful town of Caesarea Philippi, filled with luxurious palaces, set in a magnificent natural landscape at the foot of Mount Hermon, but also a place of cruel power plays and the scene of betrayals and infidelity. This setting speaks to us of a world that considers Jesus a completely insignificant person, at best someone with an unusual and striking way of speaking and acting. And so, once his presence becomes irksome because of his demands for honesty and his stern moral requirements, this “world” will not hesitate to reject and eliminate him.

Then there is the other possible response to Jesus’ question: that of ordinary people. For them, the Nazarene is not a charlatan, but an upright man, one who has courage, who speaks well and says the right things, like other great prophets in the history of Israel. That is why they follow him, at least for as long as they can do so without too much risk or inconvenience. Yet to them he is only a man, and therefore, in times of danger, during his passion, they too abandon him and depart disappointed.

What is striking about these two attitudes is their relevance today. They embody notions that we could easily find on the lips of many men and women in our own time, even if, while essentially identical, they are expressed in different language.

Even today, there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.

These are contexts where it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied. Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed. A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society.

Today, too, there are many settings in which Jesus, although appreciated as a man, is reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman. This is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptized Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism.

This is the world that has been entrusted to us, a world in which, as Pope Francis taught us so many times, we are called to bear witness to our joyful faith in Jesus the Savior. Therefore, it is essential that we too repeat, with Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).

It is essential to do this, first of all, in our personal relationship with the Lord, in our commitment to a daily journey of conversion. Then, to do so as a Church, experiencing together our fidelity to the Lord and bringing the Good News to all (cf. Lumen Gentium, 1).

I say this first of all to myself, as the Successor of Peter, as I begin my mission as Bishop of Rome and, according to the well-known expression of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, am called to preside in charity over the universal Church (cf. Letter to the Romans, Prologue). Saint Ignatius, who was led in chains to this city, the place of his impending sacrifice, wrote to the Christians there: “Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world no longer sees my body” (Letter to the Romans, IV, 1). Ignatius was speaking about being devoured by wild beasts in the arena – and so it happened – but his words apply more generally to an indispensable commitment for all those in the Church who exercise a ministry of authority. It is to move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified (cf. Jn 3:30), to spend oneself to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know and love him.

May God grant me this grace, today and always, through the loving intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church. (“Pope” Leo XIV’s homily at Mass with the cardinal electors in the Sistine Chapel.)

There is nothing objectionable in this “homily,” which he delivered with sobriety as he presided over the Novus Ordo liturgical abomination with evident piety and reverence. Unlike his immediate predecessor, Robert Francis Prevost, who is neither a priest nor a bishop, of course, is not a clown. He thinks he is the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ and thus understands the gravity of his ascension to be what he believes is a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter.

Prevost’s gravity distinguishes him from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, of course, but also the buffoon who thinks he is the conciliar “archbishop” New York, Timothy Michael Dolan, who tapped Prevost on the shoulder in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, to ask the following question of Prevost, whom he had not known prior to the conclave:

Later, in the Sistine Chapel, I was seated directly behind Cardinal Prevost, and I realized that I had forgotten an important question.

Leaning over, I whispered “Don Roberto” – Italian for “Father Robert,” a traditional greeting for Italian priests, including cardinals – “Cubs or White Sox?”

Looking back at me, he said, “I’m a South Sider – White Sox for me.”

As a loyal Saint Louis Cardinals fan, I was very relieved he was not a fan of those dreaded Cubs! (Exclusive | Cardinal Dolan reveals how Pope Leo XIV 'impressed' him at the conclave -- and predicts what kind of pontiff he will be.)

You take the clown out of his native Saint Louis, Missouri, and put him Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he wore of “cheesehead” miter at a Novus Ordo service, and then send him to New York, but the clown remains a clown wherever he goes, including posing with the scantily clad Rockettes at the Radio City Music Hall in Rockefeller Center on November 5, 2015 (see Card. Dolan embraces the Rockettes) and made the following profound theological comment on WPIX-TV, Channel 11, New York, New York, on November 23, 2010:

Thanksgiving is a time of the year when people are open to the Lord, and we don't think about ourselves. We're grateful to God. We're conscious that somebody, some call him or her, whatever you want, somebody beyond us is in charge, and we are immensely grateful. (Is 'Superman' Catholic? This link worked in 2010, but it is a dead end now. For my commentary about his, please see Whatever You Want.)

Robert Francis Prevost, though, is no clown. He is, from all reports that I have seen, a modest, personable man who bears himself with a studied reserve. One of his brothers says that the new conciliar “pope” was a daily communicant in his youth until entering the preparatory seminary system when he was twelve years of age in 1969, which means that “Pope” Leo XIV assisted at the true Mass every day until he was fourteen years of age.  He learned to be pious and reverent at that time, a piety, reserve, and reverence that he has displayed in the past three days, starting with first appearance on the balcony of the Basilica of Saint Peter on Thursday, May 8, 2025, the Feast of the Apparition of Saint Michael the Archangel within the Octave of Saint Joseph.

However, it is noteworthy that Robert Francis Prevost started ninth grade at Saint Augustine Preparatory Seminary in 1969, the same year in which the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination made its debut on the First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 1969. Young Robert Prevost was thus immersed into the heart of the postconciliar revolution, to which he has committed his entire life as lay Augustinian who believes that he is priest by thinking that the conciliar path is but a “pastoral adjustment” to Catholicism that is not in conflict with Faith and Morals. This is wrong, of course, but this is what honestly believes.

As such, however, he is the most dangerous of the conciliar "popes" thus far as, unlike Bergoglio, he has reverence for what he thinks is sacred and speaks in measured terms. He believes that he is doing the work of God. He isn't, of course, but this will mean nothing to most Catholics as they are too busy with their own lives to see beyond the superficial. Bergoglio repulsed many. Prevost will confuse even some sedevacantists given his serious demeanor. 

In this regard, therefore, and especially given the “homily” quoted in its entirety above, believing

Catholics should be reminded of Pope Saint Pius X’s warning about the doublemindedness of Modernists:

18. This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Thus, Catholics must be able to see past Robert Francis Prevost’s piety, reverence, gravity, and modest reserve to recognize that the clothes do not make any man, including him, a true pope.

It thus beyond the foolish and silly to try to strain into the new “pontiff’s” appearance and his facility with the Latin language into concluding that there are “signs” of “hope” that Robert Francis Prevost will be more “traditional” than is generally believed.

While it is understandable that any Catholic who does not understand right principles concerning the counterfeit nature of the conciliar church to want to find Highlights for Children Magazine to look doe hidden traditional features in the new “pope,” those of us who understand that the counterfeit church of conciliarism cannot be the Catholic Church recognize that that anyone who defects from even one doctrine of the Faith has expelled himself from the bosom of Holy Mother Church and cannot thus be considered a Catholic.

Who says this?

Well, let’s try Saint Robert Bellarmine, S.J., Saint Francis de Sales, Pope Leo XIII, who relied heavily upon the writings of none other than Saint Augustine, and Pope Benedict XV:

There are some persons, dear listeners, who hold almost everything with a firm faith that Catholics hold: but there is one thing or another, which they have not yet been able to accept completely, such as that purgatory exists, that sacred images are to be venerated, that the sovereign Pontiff is the vicar of Christ and the head of the whole Church. And since there are many things that they believe, and only one or two things that they do not believe and consider it is not important if taken together with the other articles, they think they are situated very well on the foundation of Christ. What is the difference, they say, even if I err in that one thing, which I still cannot believe, and at the judgment will the Lord be concerned about that? And will he not be mindful of the many difficult things I believe? Indeed, this is the way in which they flatter themselves; I serious rebuke them and say that they have fallen from grace and have laid their foundation on sand, and will have no part with Christ. Either the faith is had completely, or it is not had at all. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. I ask you (to clarify the matter with a crass example), when you order a pair of shoes from a shoemaker, if when they are finally made you find they are an inch shorter than your feet, do you not put them on and wear them? Your will say “I cannot wear them” But they are only an inch too short, so why can't you wear them, since they are just a little bit short of the right measurement? As, therefore, your shoes are either the right size for your feet or they have no value at all, so also the faith is either integral, or it is not the faith. Therefore no one should deceive himself. If we want to build a house which cannot be moved by wind or rain, we must lay the foundation of both rocks, that is, on Christ and Peter. (Sermons of St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J., Part II: Sermons 30-55, Including the Four Last Things and the Annunciation., translated from the Latin by Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., and published in 2017 by Keep the Faith, Inc., Ramsey, New Jersey, pp. 152-154.)

With reference to its object, faith cannot be greater for some truths than for others. Nor can it be less with regard to the number of truths to be believed. For we must all believe the very same thing, both as to the object of faith as well as to the number of truths. All are equal in this because everyone must believe all the truths of faith--both those which God Himself has directly revealed, as well as those he has revealed through His Church. Thus, I must believe as much as you and you as much as I, and all other Christians similarly. He who does not believe all these mysteries is not Catholic and therefore will never enter Paradise. (Saint Francis de Sales, The Sermons of Saint Francis de Sales for Lent Given in 1622, republished by TAN Books and Publishers for the Visitation Monastery of Frederick, Maryland, in 1987, pp. 34-37.)

8. We are mindful only of what is witnessed to by Holy Writ and what is otherwise well known. Christ proves His own divinity and the divine origin of His mission by miracles; He teaches the multitudes heavenly doctrine by word of mouth; and He absolutely commands that the assent of faith should be given to His teaching, promising eternal rewards to those who believe and eternal punishment to those who do not. “If I do not the works of my Father, believe Me not” John x., 37). “If I had not done among them the works than no other man had done, they would not have sin” (Ibid. xv., 24). “But if I do (the works) though you will not believe Me, believe the works” (Ibid. x., 38). Whatsoever He commands, He commands by the same authority. He requires the assent of the mind to all truths without exception. It was thus the duty of all who heard Jesus Christ, if they wished for eternal salvation, not merely to accept His doctrine as a whole, but to assent with their entire mind to all and every point of it, since it is unlawful to withhold faith from God even in regard to one single point. (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine:they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic Faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved’ (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim ‘Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,’ only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.

Besides, the Church demands from those who have devoted themselves to furthering her interests, something very different from the dwelling upon profitless questions; she demands that they should devote the whole of their energy to preserve the faith intact and unsullied by any breath of error, and follow most closely him whom Christ has appointed to be the guardian and interpreter of the truth. There are to be found today, and in no small numbers, men, of whom the Apostle says that: "having itching ears, they will not endure sound doctrine: but according to their own desires they will heap up to themselves teachers, and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables" (II Tim. iv. 34). Infatuated and carried away by a lofty idea of the human intellect, by which God's good gift has certainly made incredible progress in the study of nature, confident in their own judgment, and contemptuous of the authority of the Church, they have reached such a degree of rashness as not to hesitate to measure by the standard of their own mind even the hidden things of God and all that God has revealed to men. Hence arose the monstrous errors of "Modernism," which Our Predecessor rightly declared to be "the synthesis of all heresies," and solemnly condemned. We hereby renew that condemnation in all its fulness, Venerable Brethren, and as the plague is not yet entirely stamped out, but lurks here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully on their guard against any contagion of the evil, to which we may apply the words Job used in other circumstances: "It is a fire that devoureth even to destruction, and rooteth up all things that spring" (Job xxxi. 12). Nor do We merely desire that Catholics should shrink from the errors of Modernism, but also from the tendencies or what is called the spirit of Modernism. Those who are infected by that spirit develop a keen dislike for all that savours of antiquity and become eager searchers after novelties in everything: in the way in which they carry out religious functions, in the ruling of Catholic institutions, and even in private exercises of piety. Therefore it is Our will that the law of our forefathers should still be held sacred: "Let there be no innovation; keep to what has been handed down." In matters of faith that must be inviolably adhered to as the law; it may however also serve as a guide even in matters subject to change, but even in such cases the rule would hold: "Old things, but in a new way."  (Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, November 1, 1914.)

Do not be deceived by appearances. We do not have to strain for “clues” about the “real” “Pope” Leo XIV as Jorge Mario Bergoglio gave him many responsibilities during his, Bergoglio’s disastrous twelve years, one month, and eight days as the universal public face of apostasy.

It is entirely irrelevant that Robert Francis Prevost is likable, has enjoyed himself watching his beloved Chicago White Sox (it is perhaps possible, albeit remotely, that I may have run into him or, at least, he may have seen me when the famous baseball entrepreneur Bill Veeck, who was then in his second time as the owner of the Whie Sox, invited me to bring my act from Shea Stadium to Comiskey Park in 1977 when I had moved to Normal, Illinois, to teach at Illinois State University), and keeps in close contact with his family even though he has lived apart from them for the past fifty-six years. He is described as personable and a good listener, and he did devote himself to the service of the poor in Peru, where he spent most of his presbyteral life, while believing he was also tending to their souls.

The Fundamental Question: Is the Conciliar Church the Catholic Church?

This is all irrelevant as to whether Robert Francis Prevost is Pope Leo XIV in fact.

What is relevant is the following question: Is the conciliar church the Catholic Church?

Perhaps I can illustrate what to many is a conundrum by relating a conversation between two conciliar priests located somewhat east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Bavarian Alps about thirty so years ago as related to me directly by one who was directly involved in the conversation.

The conciliar priest said that his friend said that either their mutual criticism of the Second Vatican Council and the Novus Ordo service was correct or that the “Holy Spirit had changed His mind,” to which I, then an indulterer had already had some of my giddy enthusiasm for Karol Joszef Wojtyla tempered by the Assisi event on October 27, 1986, and the permission he gave for the use of girl altar boys, replied, “That’s impossible. God is immutable. He cannot change His mind.”

While I had another ten years or so to go before finally admitting the obvious, once I did come to the correct conclusion about the state of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal “in 2006, I have tried to hammer home the simple fac that conciliar warfare against the immutable nature of dogmatic truth, which is dogmatic evolutionism disguised by Wojtyla/John Paul II as “living tradition” and his consigliere and successor, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as “hermeneutic of continuity” before Jorge Mario Bergoglio company’s open and unapologetic embrace of dogmatic evolutionism (by making advertence to a misrepresented version of the teaching of Saint Vincent Lerins, who actually taught the opposite of what Bergoglio contended) has been and will ever be an attack upon the immutable nature of God Himself. I have discussed this so many times and in so many ways that there is no need in this commentary to repeat the condemnations of dogmatic evolutionism by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, and the Constitution of the Holy Faith issued at the [First] Vatican Council, April 24, 1870; by Pope Saint Pius X in Lamentabili Sane, July 1, 1907, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, and in The Oath Against Modernism, September 10, 1910.

The ongoing conciliar war against the nature of dogmatic truth and thus the nature of God Himself is a monstrous act of claiming that dogmatic truth can never be expressed adequately in human language and is thus subject to “adjustments” or “reassessments” in light of changing historical circumstances and the perceptions of theologians. This is blasphemy against God the Holy Ghost, who infallibly guided our true popes and Holy Mother Church’s twenty general councils to issue decrees and definitions clearly and precisely, and it is nothing other theological and moral relativism, plain and simple.

This is the fundamental question concerning the legitimacy of the conciliar church, its conciliar documents, its magisterial statements, its “papal” encyclical letters, “apostolic exhortations,” liturgical rites, canon law, and pastoral practice, much of which is, despite all protestations by the conciliar “popes” and their apologists notwithstanding, has “evolved” over time the exercise of opaqueness and ambiguity to become the overt, rather than implied or arguable, denials of Catholic Faith, Worship, and Morals, although Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964, Nostra Aetate, October 28, 1965, Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, directly contradict Catholic teaching as has been demonstrated hundreds of times on this site as well as more ably by many others who are far more skilled than me. Robert Francis Prevost believes in each of these documents, and he is sure to celebrate the last three of these decrees later this year on the sixtieth anniversary of their issuance. He will also celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the closing of the “Second” Vatican Council by Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI on December 8, 2025.

Looking for “Signs” and “Clues”

Once again, do not permit yourselves to be snookered by appearances and not fall into the traps and go down the rabbit holes that some in the “resist while recognize” camp are doing now, thus reenacting the way that I and many other Catholics permitted ourselves to snookered by appearances as we went down rabbit holes to find “clues” about Karol Joszef Wojtyla/John Paul II emerged on the balcony of the Basilica of Saint Peter on Monday, October 16, 1978. We projected our own fondest wishes into the Polish Phenomenologist’s mind as keep waiting for him to “make his move” to “restore” right order within what we thought was the Catholic Church. We forgave him Joseph Bernardin, we overlooked Assisi, we tolerated other false ecumenical events, we shook our heads about “papal” extravaganza liturgical hootenannies, and we kept coming back for more and more punishment until some of us, very late in time, began to have the scales removed very slowly before realizing that “Pope John Paul II” was part of the problem but without coming to the logical conclusions.

I mention all this because many of us—I was thirty-seven days away from turning twenty-seven in my third full-time year as a college professor of political science when Wojtyla/John Paul II was “elected”—thought we saw “light” after the dark night of the dour, self-pitying Hamlet on the Tiber, Montini/Paul VI.

Now, forty-seven years later, many Catholics are falling into the same trap after the dark night of the buffoonish, overt hater of Catholic doctrine Jorge Mario Bergoglio in looking for “clues” or “signs” to determine if Robert Francis Prevost is an orthodox Catholic.

As mentioned earlier in this commentary and will be mentioned, I suppose, repeatedly in the upcoming days, weeks, months, and years to come, “Pope” Leo XIV differs from his predecessor in matters of demeanor, but he full intends to carry out Bergoglio’s desire for a synodal church just as Karol Joszef Wojtyla, who, like Prevost, had a deep devotion to the Mother of God, was fully committed to carry on with the agenda of the “Second” Vatican Council, which why he took the “papal” name of “John Paul II” to signify the sort of continuity that his own short-lived processor, Albino Luciani, desired when he innovated with the name “John Paul” to honor Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII and Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI and thus the entirety of the conciliar agenda.

Here are the “signs” that I thought were encouraging in the days, weeks, and months after October 16, 1978:

1. It was within a week of his election on October 16, 1978, that John Paul II said that he wanted to see priests back in their clerical garb and women religious back in their habits. He's traditionally-minded, I told people repeatedly.

2. He tried to put catechesis back on the "right track" with the issuance of the post-synodal exhortation Sapientia Christianae

3. He told off the Communists in Poland in June of 1979, saying in a "homily" at an outdoor "Mass" in Victory Square in Warsaw that no one could ever remove Christ as the center of history. See, he's not an appeaser like Paul VI, I said triumphantly.

4. John Paul II whacked the American bishops over the head but good during his first pilgrimage to the United States of America in October of 1979, using some of their own pastoral letters against them, knowing full well that they were not enforcing their own documents. He told Catholic educators assembled at The Catholic University of America on October 7, 1979, and I was one of those educators in attendance that day, that the Church needed her theologians to be "faithful to the magisterium." I gloated as John Paul II said this, staring in the direction of the notorious dissenter named Father Charles Curran, a priest of the Diocese of Rochester, New York, who was sitting two rows in back of me, dressed in a jacket and tie. It was later that same day that the "pope" denounced abortion as the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America sat in the very front row of chairs on the Capitol Mall during an outdoor "Mass," saying in a most stirring manner, "And when God gives life, it is forever!"

5. Two months thereafter, in December of 1979, Father Hans Kung was declared by the then named Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to be ineligible to hold a chair in theology at Tubingen University in Germany (all right, all right, "other arrangements" were made to permit Kung to stay). "Let the heads roll," I told my classes at Allentown College of Saint Francis de Sales that day. "Let the heads of the dissenters roll."

6. John Paul II wanted to correct abuses in the Novus Ordo liturgial abomination, using his Holy Thursday letter, Dominicae Cenae, February 24, 1980, going so far as to state:

As I bring these considerations to an end, I would like to ask forgiveness-in my own name and in the name of all of you, venerable and dear brothers in the episcopate-for everything which, for whatever reason, through whatever human weakness, impatience or negligence, and also through the at times partial, one-sided and erroneous application of the directives of the Second Vatican Council, may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of the doctrine and the veneration due to this great sacrament. And I pray the Lord Jesus that in the future we may avoid in our manner of dealing with this sacred mystery anything which could weaken or disorient in any way the sense of reverence and love that exists in our faithful people. (Karol Joszef Wojytla/John Paul II, Dominicae Cenae, February 24, 1980.)

“See,” I said proudly to one and all. ‘He's going to ‘fix’ things, isn't he?”

The issuance of Inaestimabile Donum two months later, which I would wave in the faces of "disobedient" conciliar priests/presbyters for about a decade before it began to dawn on me that there was going to be no enforcement of "rules" in an ever-changing and ever-changeable liturgical abomination, was "proof," I said at the time, of how the "pope" is "turning things around in right direction. I wasn't the only one. The Angelus, a publication of the Society of Saint Pius X, commented favorably on some of these things itself in 1980.

7. "Pope" John Paul II personally opened a Perpetual Adoration Chapel in the Piazza Venezia in Rome at the behest of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, also mandating daily periods of Solemn Eucharistic Adoration in each of the four major basilicas in Rome. He used his pilgrimage to South Korea in 1984 to state that he wanted to see Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration established in all the parishes of the world.

8. Father Charles Curran was finally denied in 1986 the right to teach as a theologian in Catholic institutions and Father Matthew Fox, O.P., was forbidden to teach in Catholic institutions by John Paul II's "defender of the faith," Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, and dismissed from the Order of Preachers in 1992 for his New Age "creation spirituality" beliefs.

9. John Paul II would take various American "bishops" to task during the quinquennial (or ad limina apostolorum) visits, pointedly asking the late "Bishop" John Raymond McGann of the Diocese of Rockville Center in 1983 why sixteen of his diocese's parishes did not have regularly scheduled confessions during the recently concluded Easter Triduum. Being dissatisfied with McGann's answer ("Our priests are very busy, Your Holiness"), John Paul said, "Excellency, I was not too buy to hear Confessions in Saint Peter's on Good Friday." McGann got into further trouble later that day in April of 1983 when he was talking at lunch with John Paul and the other New York Province "bishops" about how most young people today do not know their faith and are thus in theological states of error, inculpable for their ignorance. John Paul II put down his soup spoon and said, "I agree with you. You are correct. However, the bishops and priests who are responsible for these young people being in states of error go directly to Hell when they die." McGann turned ashen, reportedly having difficulty eating for three days. "Ah, what a pope we have," I said when learning of this from Roman contacts.

10. Silvio Cardinal Oddi, then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, told me personally in his office on the Via della Concilazione on October 10, 1984, the very day that the first "indult" for the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was issued, "I want the Mass of Saint Pius V back! The Pope wants the Mass of Saint Pius V back! We will get the Mass of Saint Pius V back!" Cardinal Oddi explained that there was much opposition to what the "pope" wanted to, that he had to move cautiously and with conditions. He made it clear, however, that it was the mind of the "pope" for the "old Mass" to return. 

Such a litany could go on and on and on. Oh, did I mention that I did indeed "sing the old songs" quite literally? Yes, indeed, my friends, I stood with several thousand people outside and across the street from what was then called the Apostolic Delegation (now called the Papal Nunciature) on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., on the evening of Saturday, October 6, 1979, serenading "Pope" John Paul II with endless renditions of "Stolat, stolat, may you live a hundred years!" Get the idea?

Sure, sure, sure I was always "uncomfortable" with ecumenism in particular and the whole ethos of Vatican II in general. John Paul II was going to "fix" things, I convinced myself. No more "Hamlet on the Tiber" as had been experienced under Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI. I simply ignored those things that contradicted my delusional concept of who Karol Wojtyla was and what he believed; that he had been a leading revolutionary at the "Second" Vatican Council and was a thorough-going Modernist in both theological and philosophical terms.

Now, having listed the scraps that I thought, delusionally, meant that a “restoration” was near, intellectual honesty compels me to explain what I had to overlook about Wojtyla/John Paul II’s Modernism, especially as regards false ecumenism and his abject refusal to seek the conversion of anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic, to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no truly just social order, noting that everything about the false conciliar religion has been premised upon false ecumenism, which has spawned a cottage industry of "inter-religious" "prayer" services, workshops, conferences, “dialogue” sessions, and heretical “joint agreements.”

One of the first things I chose to ignore in the heady rush of what appeared to be a “firm” Catholic “pope” was Karol Josef Wotyla/Saint John Paul II’s commitment to the false ecumenism that had been initiated by Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Blessed Paul VI a central feature of his 9,666 day tenure as the universal public face of apostasy, starting with the address that he gave to the "cardinals" on Tuesday, October 17, 1978:

First of all, we wish to point out the unceasing importance of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, and we accept the definite duty of assiduously bringing it into effect. Indeed, is not that universal Council a kind of milestone as it were, an event of the utmost importance in the almost two thousand year history of the Church, and consequently in the religious and cultural history of the world.

However, as the Council is not limited to the documents alone, neither is it completed by the ways applying it which were devised in these post-conciliar years. Therefore we rightly consider that we are bound by the primary duty of most diligently furthering the implementation of the decrees and directive norms of that same Universal Synod. This indeed we shall do in a way that is at once prudent and stimulating. We shall strive, in particular, that first of all an appropriate mentality may flourish. Namely, it is necessary that, above all, outlooks must be at one with the Council so that in practice those things may be done that were ordered by it, and that those things which lie hidden in it or—as is usually said—are "implicit" may become explicit in the light of the experiments made since then and the demands of changing circumstances. Briefly, it is necessary that the fertile seeds which the Fathers of the Ecumenical Synod, nourished by the word of God, sowed in good ground (cf. Mt 13: 8, 23)—that is, the important teachings and pastoral deliberations should be brought to maturity in that way which is characteristic of movement and life. (First Urbi et Orbi Radio message, October 17, 1978.)

Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II sure found "those things which lie hidden in" the "Second" Vatican Council" as he made manifestly explicit what he believed was "implicit" in his vaunted "Second" Vatican Council, fooling the sappy likes of me by throwing some conciliar fairy dust in our eyes as he talked about getting priests back in their clerical garb and consecrated religious sisters back into their habits and demanding doctrinal orthodoxy from theologians even though he was not doctrinally orthodox and let most of the ultra-progressive conciliar revolutionaries remain in perfectly good standing as sons and daughters of what he claimed was the Catholic Church.

What those of us who were fighting what we thought was the “good fight” of the Catholic Faith at that time did not realize—and what so many within the structures of the false conciliar sect have yet to recognize—is that is as impossible for conciliarism to protect the Sacred Deposit of Faith as it is based upon false principles of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry. It cannot do anything but spread errors and harm souls.  We are merely witnessing the manifestation of the inherent degeneracy of conciliarism's false premises.

No matter Robeert Francis Prevost’s reserved personal manner, which is both different than the buffoonish pathological liar from Argentine, the frequently showboating Polish Phenomenologist and the pseudo-intellectualizing style of the old German follower of Has Urs von Balthasar’s “new theology” that was condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 15, 1950, he is still a complete son of the conciliar revolution and is fully committed to its continued implementation, although assuredly with his own style, nuances, and areas of differences here and there with some of his conciliar predecessor, including Bergoglio himself.

As I noted twelve years ago after Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s election to be the universal public face of apostasy, don’t permit yourselves to be snookered. Keep focused on root causes and not the individual personalities who come and go over the course of the years.

What About Choosing the Name of Leo?

Much has been made, both by Catholic and secular commentators, of Robert Francis Prevost’s choosing the “papal” name of Leo as a clue to his priorities. Particular attention has been called to Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, to conclude that “Leo XIV” desires to be a “workers’ pope” in the pattern of Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci, Pope Leo XIII. This conclusion is overly simplistic as Rerum Novarum, which will be discussed in part two of this commentary, was only one of Pope Leo XIII’s great encyclical letters, and I have yet to find any commentator, whether Catholic or secular, who would dare to claim that “Leo XIV” means to stand by, defend, and propagate Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letters on the necessity of the Catholic Church being accorded the favor of the civil state in all that pertains to the good of souls (Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, Tametsi Futura Prospicentibus, November 1, 1900, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902), the chief duties of Christians as citizens (Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890), his condemnation of Freemason and the dangers of naturalism (Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892), his careful analysis of the dangers of contemporary religious liberty while making the distinctions between the necessity of Holy Mother Church making concessions to the reality in which children find themselves in pluralistic nations without making any concessions to the errors whatsoever to modern errors as a matter of principle, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888), his condemnation of the evils of divorce and remarriage while emphasizing the immutable first end of marriage being the begetting and education of children (Arcanum, February 10, 1880), his call for the unconditional return of non-Catholic Christians, especially the Orthodox, to return to the Catholic Church (Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29, 1894), and his explanation of the monarchical nature of the Catholic Church (Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896) that is compatible with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s desire for a “synodal church” that Robert Francis Prevost has said that he continue and fulfill.

I will endeavor presently how these encyclical letters are contrary to “Pope” Leo XIV’s beliefs, most of which are formed by the conciliar revolution and not a commitment to Pope Leo XIII’s reiteration of the immutable Catholic teaching on matters of Church-State relations, religious liberty, marriage and the family, and the nature of Holy Mother Church.

The Background, Meaning, and Importance of Pope Leo XIII’s Social Encyclicals

The best way to demonstrate what I have summarized below is to explain that the problems of the modern economic system discussed by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum and were just part of the

many consequences of the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the subsequent rise and institutionalization of Judeo-Masonic religious indifferentism as the basis of social, political, cultural, and economic life.

Father Matin Luther, O.S.A., made it possible for the triumph of Machiavellianism among princes when he endorsed the Judeo-Masonic concept of “separation of Church and State,” thus fulfilling one of the goals that the ancient enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had sought since the earliest beginnings of Christendom:

The rending of the Mystical Body by the so-called Reformation movement has resulted in the pendulum swinging from the extreme error of Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism to the opposite extreme error of the Judaeo-Masonic-Communism of Karl Marx.

The uprise of individualism rapidly led to unbridled self-seeking. Law-makers who were arbiters of morality, as heads of the Churches, did not hesitate to favour their own enterprising spirit. The nobles and rich merchants in England, for example, who got possession of the monastery lands, which had maintained the poor, voted the poor laws in order to make the poor a charge on the nation at large. The enclosure of common lands in England and the development of the industrial system are a proof of what private judgment can do when transplanted into the realm of production and distribution. The Lutheran separation of Church from the Ruler and the Citizen shows the decay in the true idea of membership of our Lord's Mystical Body.

"Assuredly," said Luther, "a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion." (As quoted in Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.) 

Perhaps it should be called to mind that Jews helped to propagate the Protestant Revolution and had actually planted a good deal of the heretical seeds for it long before Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1571, something that the great historian, William Thomas Walsh, documented in his massive biography of King Philip II of Spain.

Luther’s belief in the fission of supposedly “private” belief from public conduct came to be embraced by many Catholics in the United States of America during the Eighteenth Century and was expressed by Alfred Emanuel Smith in an article ghost-written for him by the famous Father Francis Duffy in 1927 and then by John Fitzgerald Kennedy thirty-three years later. Luther, in other words, “baptized” Machiavellianism and thus paved the way for pro-abortion and pro-perversity Catholics in public life to claim to be “personally opposed” to such evils as the surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn in their mothers’ wombs while supporting the enactment and retention of public laws making such killing “permissible.”

Pope Leo XIII explained that Catholics must be guided by integrity, not by the exigencies of political expediency:

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

One has a duty to use the true Faith as the basis of public policy in all that pertains to the ogod of souls as what pertains to the good of souls determines the fate of nations and of the world. Niccolo Machiavelli need not apply, thank you very much.

Luther’s revolution, of course, made its way across the English Channel in due course, and the consequences of the bloody revolution against the Catholic Church and the Social Reign of Christ the King that was launched in England, which had been proudly Catholic for over nine hundred years, by the lecherous, adulterous and bigamous drunkard King Henry VIII in 1534. Henry Tudor, who could have obtained his decree of nullity from “Pope Francis” if he had not died on January 28, 1547, commenced a bloody campaign against Catholics who refused to recognize his completely illegitimate claim to be the supreme head of the Church in England that resulted in the deaths of over 72,000 Catholics, fully three percent of the English population at that time, including, of course, Saints John Fisher and Thomas More. The tyrant ordered persecutions in Ireland, of course, and engaged in grotesque acts of social engineering that were designed to make his revolution against Christ the King and the Catholic Church irreversible.

Indeed, the kind of state-sponsored social engineering that has created the culture of entitlement in England and elsewhere in Europe has its antecedent roots in Henry's revolt against the Social Reign of Christ the King and His Catholic Church in the Sixteenth Century.

The violence that we see expanding exponentially in our cities and in workplaces and in schools and on university campuses is but the all-too-logical consequence of a world founded on the false premises that man can know social order in the pursuit of his "ultimate" end, that is, material prosperity as a sign of 'divine election," while spitting in the face of the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law and plaiting Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ anew with a Crown of Thorns as His Social Kingship is mocked and vilified as "outdated," unnecessary and even harmful by Catholic conservative quislings and by the entire ethos of conciliarism-at-large.

Luther's own embrace of amorality in statecraft made it possible for the triumph of amorality in commerce and all other aspects of social life, something that was noted by Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., and Dr. George O'Brien in the Twentieth Century.

This teaching had its economic repercussion in the current that led to the doctrine laid down in Daniel Defoe's The Complete Tradesman, according to which a man must keep his religious and his business life apart and not allow one to interfere with the other.

"There is some difference," wrote Defoe, "between an honest man and an honest tradesman. . . . There are some latitudes, like poetical licences in other cases, which a tradesman must be and is allowed, and which by the custom and usage of a trade he may give himself a liberty in, which cannot be allowed in other cases to any men, no, nor to the tradesman himself out of the business." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

The thesis we have endeavoured to present in this essay is, that the two great dominating schools of modern economic thought have a common origin. The capitalist school, which, basing its position on the unfettered right of the individual to do what he will with his own, demands the restriction of government interference in economic and social affairs within the narrowest  possible limits, and the socialist school, which, basing its position on the complete subordination of the individual to society, demands the socialization of all the means of production, if not all of wealth, face each other today as the only two solutions of the social question; they are bitterly hostile towards each other, and mutually intolerant and each is at the same weakened and provoked by the other. In one respect, and in one respect only, are they identical--they can both be shown to be the result of the Protestant Reformation.

We have seen the direct connection which exists between these modern schools of economic thought and their common ancestor. Capitalism found its roots in the intensely individualistic spirit of Protestantism, in the spread of anti-authoritative ideas from the realm of religion into the realm of political and social thought, and, above all, in the distinctive Calvinist doctrine of a successful and prosperous career being the outward and visible sign by which the regenerated might be known. Socialism, on the other hand, derived encouragement from the violations of established and prescriptive rights of which the Reformation afforded so many examples, from the growth of heretical sects tainted with Communism, and from the overthrow of the orthodox doctrine on original sin, which opened the way to the idea of the perfectibility of man through institutions. But, apart from these direct influences, there were others, indirect, but equally important. Both these great schools of economic thought are characterized by exaggerations and excesses; the one lays too great stress on the importance of the individual, and other on the importance of the community; they are both departures, in opposite directions, from the correct mean of reconciliation and of individual liberty with social solidarity. These excesses and exaggerations are the result of the free play of private judgment unguided by authority, and could not have occurred if Europe had continued to recognize an infallible central authority in ethical affairs.

The science of economics is the science of men's relations with one another in the domain of acquiring and disposing of wealth, and is, therefore, like political science in another sphere, a branch of the science of ethics. In the Middle Ages, man's ethical conduct, like his religious conduct, was under the supervision and guidance of a single authority, which claimed at the same time the right to define and to enforce its teaching. The machinery for enforcing the observance of medieval ethical teaching was of a singularly effective kind; pressure was brought to bear upon the conscience of the individual through the medium of compulsory periodical consultations with a trained moral adviser, who was empowered to enforce obedience to his advice by the most potent spiritual sanctions. In this way, the whole conduct of man in relation to his neighbours was placed under the immediate guidance of the universally received ethical preceptor, and a common standard of action was ensured throughout the Christian world in the all the affairs of life. All economic transactions in particular were subject to the jealous scrutiny of the individual's spiritual director; and such matters as sales, loans, and so on, were considered reprehensible and punishable if not conducted in accordance with the Christian standards of commutative justice.

The whole of this elaborate system for the preservation of justice in the affairs of everyday life was shattered by the Reformation. The right of private judgment, which had first been asserted in matters of faith, rapidly spread into moral matters, and the attack on the dogmatic infallibility of the Church left Europe without an authority to which it could appeal on moral questions. The new Protestant churches were utterly unable to supply this want. The principle of private judgment on which they rested deprived them of any right to be listened to whenever they attempted to dictate moral precepts to their members, and henceforth the moral behaviour of the individual became a matter to be regulated by the promptings of his own conscience, or by such philosophical systems of ethics as he happened to approve. The secular state endeavoured to ensure that dishonesty amounting to actual theft or fraud should be kept in check, but this was a poor and ineffective substitute for the powerful weapon of the confessional. Authority having once broken down, it was but a single step from Protestantism to rationalism; and the way was opened to the development of all sorts of erroneous systems of morality. (Dr. George O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Efforts of the Reformation, IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003.) 

Dr. O'Brien went on to state that true pope after true pope has stated concerning the necessity of men and their nations subordinating themselves to the Catholic Church as they pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End:

There is one institution and one institution alone which is capable of supplying and enforcing the social ethic that is needed to revivify the world. It is an institution at once intra-national and international; an institution that can claim to pronounce infallibly on moral matters, and to enforce the observance of the its moral decrees by direct sanctions on the individual conscience of man; an institution which, while respecting and supporting the civil governments of nations, can claim to exist independently of them, and can insist that they shall not intrude upon the moral life or fetter the moral liberty of their citizens. Europe possessed such an institution in the Middle Ages; its dethronement was the unique achievement of the Reformation; and the injury inflicted by that dethronement has never since been repaired. (George O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, first published in 1923, republished by IHS press in 2003, p. 132.) 

This is all very necessary to understand the context in which necessitated Pope Leo XIII to issue Rerum Novarum as a capitalism divorced from the Catholic Faith and morals created conditions for the exploitation of workers, who were not seen in most instances as redeemed creatures to be treated with respect and dignity, low wages for working long hours, unsafe and substandard working conditions, and a loss of a sense of personal responsibility by some, but not by all, entrepreneurs. These problems were particularly pronounced during the height of the industrial revolution in western Europe and the United States of America in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, and it is important to note at this juncture that none of the conciliar “popes” has ever discussed the proximate root causes of social problems as has been outlined herein just above.

Yes, fallen human nature has wreaked havoc throughout history, even during the period of the Catholic Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the frailties of Catholics in the Middle Ages pale into insignificance when one looks at the savagery of the barbaric tribes of Europe before their Catholicization in the First Millennium and that of the barbarism and abject hedonism of the supposedly “civilized” West today. Consider this very cogent summary of the history of the Middle Ages, that is, Christendom, written by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

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

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

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

Yes, the glory of the Middle Ages, which saw the transformation of barbarous nations into Catholic nations where rulers ruled in many, although certainly not all, instances according to the Mind of the Divine Redeemer as He has discharged It exclusively in the Catholic Church, was undermined and attacked by the "deplorable passion for innovation" of Martin Luther and John Calvin and Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and John Knox and John Wesley and Richard Topcliffe and Oliver Cromwell, theological revolutionaries who wrought their work in the blood of innocent Catholics as they sacked Catholic Churches and denied her perennial rites of worship and teaching, paved a path of blood for the likes of the social revolutionaries of the English colonies in North America and in France and Latin America and Italy and Germany.

The Protestant Revolution and the so-called “Enlightenment” ushered a true dark ages of proud men who refuse to submit in a humble and docile spirit to the true Church that Our Lord founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, in all that pertains to the good of souls.

Writing in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939, Pope Pius XII explained how the world was suffering as result of rejecting the unity effected by the Chair of Saint Peter, the papacy:

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.

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

The amorality advanced by Machiavelli served the purposes of the “freethinkers” who would form Freemasonry from its beginnings to the present day. Amorality and religious indifferentism were deemed “necessities” in the pluralist state that itself is but the product of the Protestant Revolution’s overthrew over the Social Reign of Christ the King. A method was thus devised whereby men could avoid any public reference to the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who has the right to rule over men and their nations.

Pope Leo XIII explained that a generic belief in God leads to the acceptance of religious indifferentism, which is one of the chief goals of Judeo-Masonry:

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

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

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

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)

These are points that are not discussed within the conciliar structures as no one but no one, including Robert Francis Prevost, has ever said that Catholicism is the one and only means of personal salvation and thus of as just a social order as can be realized here below in this mortal, vale of tears filled with men who are afflicted with the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect, the weakened will, the overthrow of the rational faculties in favor of the passions—concupiscence) and with the effects of Original Sin in the case of men whose immortal souls are not baptized.

Although the lack of virtue in the world today is an accomplished fact of life, it is a deception to think that a just social order can be “restored” when men who have no regard for First and Last Things are at the helm of the ship of state.

Indeed, Pope Leo XIII pointed out in Mirae Caritatis, May 25, 1902, that it is much to be desired for those who serve the public in civic rule be men of virtue who permit themselves to be formed into the image of the Divine Redeemer by spending time in prayer before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His Real Presence:

Indeed it is greatly to be desired that those men would rightly esteem and would make due provision for life everlasting, whose industry or talents or rank have put it in their power to shape the course of human events. But alas! we see with sorrow that such men too often proudly flatter themselves that they have conferred upon this world as it were a fresh lease of life and prosperity, inasmuch as by their own energetic action they are urging it on to the race for wealth, to a struggle for the possession of commodities which minister to the love of comfort and display. And yet, whithersoever we turn, we see that human society, if it be estranged from God, instead of enjoying that peace in its possessions for which it had sought, is shaken and tossed like one who is in the agony and heat of fever; for while it anxiously strives for prosperity, and trusts to it alone, it is pursuing an object that ever escapes it, clinging to one that ever eludes the grasp. For as men and states alike necessarily have their being from God, so they can do nothing good except in God through Jesus Christ, through whom every best and choicest gift has ever proceeded and proceeds. But the source and chief of all these gifts is the venerable Eucharist, which not only nourishes and sustains that life the desire whereof demands our most strenuous efforts, but also enhances beyond measure that dignity of man of which in these days we hear so much. For what can be more honourable or a more worthy object of desire than to be made, as far as possible, sharers and partakers in the divine nature? Now this is precisely what Christ does for us in the Eucharist, wherein, after having raised man by the operation of His grace to a supernatural state, he yet more closely associates and unites him with Himself. For there is this difference between the food of the body and that of the soul, that whereas the former is changed into our substance, the latter changes us into its own; so that St. Augustine makes Christ Himself say: "You shall not change Me into yourself as you do the food of your body, but you shall be changed into Me" (confessions 1. vii., c. x.).

Moreover, in this most admirable Sacrament, which is the chief means whereby men are engrafted on the divine nature, men also find the most efficacious help towards progress in every kind of virtue. And first of all in faith. In all ages faith has been attacked; for although it elevates the human mind by bestowing on it the knowledge of the highest truths, yet because, while it makes known the existence of divine mysteries, it yet leaves in obscurity the mode of their being, it is therefore thought to degrade the intellect. But whereas in past times particular articles of faith have been made by turns the object of attack; the seat of war has since been enlarged and extended, until it has come to this, that men deny altogether that there is anything above and beyond nature. Now nothing can be better adapted to promote a renewal of the strength and fervour of faith in the human mind than the mystery of the Eucharist, the "mystery of faith," as it has been most appropriately called. For in this one mystery the entire supernatural order, with all its wealth and variety of wonders, is in a manner summed up and contained: "He hath made a remembrance of His wonderful works, a merciful and gracious Lord; He hath given food to them that fear Him" (Psalm cx, 4-5). For whereas God has subordinated the whole supernatural order to the Incarnation of His Word, in virtue whereof salvation has been restored to the human race, according to those words of the Apostle; "He hath purposed...to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, in Him" (Eph. i., 9-10), the Eucharist, according to the testimony of the holy Fathers, should be regarded as in a manner a continuation and extension of the Incarnation. For in and by it the substance of the incarnate Word is united with individual men, and the supreme Sacrifice offered on Calvary is in a wondrous manner renewed, as was signified beforehand by Malachy in the words: "In every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a pure oblation" (Mal. i., 11). And this miracle, itself the very greatest of its kind, is accompanied by innumerable other miracles; for here all the laws of nature are suspended; the whole substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and the Blood; the species of bread and wine are sustained by the divine power without the support of any underlying substance; the Body of Christ is present in many places at the same time, that is to say, wherever the Sacrament is consecrated. And in order that human reason may the more willingly pay its homage to this great mystery, there have not been wanting, as an aid to faith, certain prodigies wrought in His honour, both in ancient times and in our own, of which in more than one place there exist public and notable records and memorials. It is plain that by this Sacrament faith is fed, in it the mind finds its nourishment, the objections of rationalists are brought to naught, and abundant light is thrown on the supernatural order.

But that decay of faith in divine things of which We have spoken is the effect not only of pride, but also of moral corruption. For if it is true that a strict morality improves the quickness of man's intellectual powers, and if on the other hand, as the maxims of pagan philosophy and the admonitions of divine wisdom combine to teach us, the keenness of the mind is blunted by bodily pleasures, how much more, in the region of revealed truths, do these same pleasures obscure the light of faith, or even, by the just judgment of God, entirely extinguish it. For these pleasures at the present day an insatiable appetite rages, infecting all classes as with an infectious disease, even from tender years. Yet even for so terrible an evil there is a remedy close at hand in the divine Eucharist. For in the first place it puts a check on lust by increasing charity, according to the words of St. Augustine, who says, speaking of charity, "As it grows, lust diminishes; when it reaches perfection, lust is no more" (De diversis quaestionibus, Ixxxiii., q. 36). Moreover the most chaste flesh of Jesus keeps down the rebellion of our flesh, as St. Cyril of Alexandria taught, "For Christ abiding in us lulls to sleep the law of the flesh which rages in our members" (Lib. iv., c. ii., in Joan., vi., 57). Then too the special and most pleasant fruit of the Eucharist is that which is signified in the words of the prophet: "What is the good thing of Him," that is, of Christ, "and what is His beautiful thing, but the corn of the elect and the wine that engendereth virgins" (Zach. ix., 17), producing, in other words, that flower and fruitage of a strong and constant purpose of virginity which, even in an age enervated by luxury, is daily multiplied and spread abroad in the Catholic Church, with those advantages to religion and to human society, wherever it is found, which are plain to see. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.)

No, a confessional Catholic State is not a guarantor of social order, only the necessary precondition for it. Individual men must choose to cooperate with God's grace to build up the Kingship of Christ in their own souls and hence in every aspect of their nation's life. This is never an easy task given the frailties of fallen human nature, which is why the Church's shepherds must exhort the faithful to lives of holiness unspotted by the world and proclaim the immutable doctrine, contained in the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church, of the Social Reign of Christ the King that was exemplified so well by Saint Louis IX in the Thirteenth Century.

It is good to consider just the following passage, noting the great leader of France during most of the Thirteenth Century, Saint Louis IX, summarized the whole of the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ when he wrote:

31. Dear son, I advise you always to be devoted to the Church of Rome, and to the sovereign pontiff, our father, and to bear him the reverence and honor which you owe to your spiritual father. (From Saint Louis' Advice to His Son, in Medieval Civilization, trans. and eds. Dana Munro and George Clarke Seller, New York: The Century Company, 1910, pp. 366-375.)

There is no more cogent summary of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. Saint Louis was telling his son that he, although destined to be a king, was subordinate to the Church founded by Our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. All States, no matter the construct of their civil governments, must be so subordinate. Remember this and remember well: Catholics do not care about "states' rights." They care about God's laws, which bind all men at all times, whether they are acting individually in their own lives or in the institutions of civil governance.

Importantly, as noted just above, Saint Louis admonished his son as follows:

Dear son, freely give power to persons of good character, who know how to use it well, and strive to have wickednesses expelled from your land, that is to say, nasty oaths, and everything said or done against God or our Lady or the saints. In a wise and proper manner put a stop, in your land, to bodily sins, dicing, taverns, and other sins. (From Saint Louis' Advice to His Son, in Medieval Civilization, trans. and eds. Dana Munro and George Clarke Seller, New York: The Century Company, 1910, pp. 366-375.)

Yes, good character matters in statecraft and, as Pope Leo XIII noted in both Testem Benveolentiae Nostre, January 22, 1899, and in Tametsi Futurum Prospiscientibus, November 1, 1900, good character and virtue cannot be maintained over the long term without access to, belief in, and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace:

Coming now to speak of the conclusions which have been deduced from the above opinions, and for them, we readily believe there was no thought of wrong or guile, yet the things themselves certainly merit some degree of suspicion. First, all external guidance is set aside for those souls who are striving after Christian perfection as being superfluous or indeed, not useful in any sense -the contention being that the Holy Spirit pours richer and more abundant graces than formerly upon the souls of the faithful, so that without human intervention He teaches and guides them by some hidden instinct of His own. Yet it is the sign of no small over-confidence to desire to measure and determine the mode of the Divine communication to mankind, since it wholly depends upon His own good pleasure, and He is a most generous dispenser ‘of his own gifts. “The Spirit breatheth whereso He listeth.” — John iii, 8.

“And to each one of us grace is given according to the measure of the giving of Christ.” — Eph. iv, 7.

And shall any one who recalls the history of the apostles, the faith of the nascent church, the trials and deaths of the martyrs and, above all, those olden times, so fruitful in saints-dare to measure our age with these, or affirm that they received less of the divine outpouring from the Spirit of Holiness? Not to dwell upon this point, there is no one who calls in question the truth that the Holy Spirit does work by a secret descent into the souls of the just and that He stirs them alike by warnings and impulses, since unless this were the case all outward defense and authority would be unavailing. “For if any persuades himself that he can give assent to saving, that is, to gospel truth when proclaimed, without any illumination of the Holy Spirit, who gives unto all sweetness both to assent and to hold, such an one is deceived by a heretical spirit.”-From the Second Council of Orange, Canon 7.

Moreover, as experience shows, these monitions and impulses of the Holy Spirit are for the most part felt through the medium of the aid and light of an external teaching authority. To quote St. Augustine. “He (the Holy Spirit) co-operates to the fruit gathered from the good trees, since He externally waters and cultivates them by the outward ministry of men, and yet of Himself bestows the inward increase.”-De Gratia Christi, Chapter xix. This, indeed, belongs to the ordinary law of God’s loving providence that as He has decreed that men for the most part shall be saved by the ministry also of men, so has He wished that those whom He calls to the higher planes of holiness should be led thereto by men; hence St. Chrysostom declares we are taught of God through the instrumentality of men.-Homily I in Inscrib. Altar. Of this a striking example is given us in the very first days of the Church.

For though Saul, intent upon blood and slaughter, had heard the voice of our Lord Himself and had asked, “What dost Thou wish me to do?” yet he was bidden to enter Damascus and search for Ananias. Acts ix: “Enter the city and it shall be there told to thee what thou must do.”

Nor can we leave out of consideration the truth that those who are striving after perfection, since by that fact they walk in no beaten or well-known path, are the most liable to stray, and hence have greater need than others of a teacher and guide. Such guidance has ever obtained in the Church; it has been the universal teaching of those who throughout the ages have been eminent for wisdom and sanctity-and hence to reject it would be to commit one’s self to a belief at once rash and dangerous.

A thorough consideration of this point, in the supposition that no exterior guide is granted such souls, will make us see the difficulty of locating or determining the direction and application of that more abundant influx of the Holy Spirit so greatly extolled by innovators. To practice virtue there is absolute need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, yet we find those who are fond of novelty giving an unwarranted importance to the natural virtues, as though they better responded to the customs and necessities of the times and that having these as his outfit man becomes more ready to act and more strenuous in action. It is not easy to understand how persons possessed of Christian wisdom can either prefer natural to supernatural virtues or attribute to them a greater efficacy and fruitfulness. Can it be that nature conjoined with grace is weaker than when left to herself?

Can it be that those men illustrious for sanctity, whom the Church distinguishes and openly pays homage to, were deficient, came short in the order of nature and its endowments, because they excelled in Christian strength? And although it be allowed at times to wonder at acts worthy of admiration which are the outcome of natural virtue-is there anyone at all endowed simply with an outfit of natural virtue? Is there any one not tried by mental anxiety, and this in no light degree? Yet ever to master such, as also to preserve in its entirety the law of the natural order, requires an assistance from on high. These single notable acts to which we have alluded will frequently upon a closer investigation be found to exhibit the appearance rather than the reality of virtue. Grant that it is virtue, unless we would “run in vain” and be unmindful of that eternal bliss which a good God in his mercy has destined for us, of what avail are natural virtues unless seconded by the gift of divine grace? Hence St. Augustine well says: “Wonderful is the strength, and swift the course, but outside the true path.” For as the nature of man, owing to the primal fault, is inclined to evil and dishonor, yet by the help of grace is raised up, is borne along with a new greatness and strength, so, too, virtue, which is not the product of nature alone, but of grace also, is made fruitful unto everlasting life and takes on a more strong and abiding character. (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

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.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established (by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Pope Leo XIII wrote in defense of the Catholic Faith as the foundation of personal and social order, an insistence that the counterfeit church of conciliarism has rejected. One will not hear “Pope Leo XIV” speaking as Pope Leo XIII spoke as to do would be in violation of the conciliar sect’s “official reconciliation” with the new principles inaugurated by the events of 1789” as found in Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, and against a false ecumenism that is itself the antithesis of Pope Leo XIII’s Praeclara Graulationus Publicae, June 26, 1894:

First of all, then, We cast an affectionate look upon the East, from whence in the beginning came forth the salvation of the world.  Yes, and the yearning desire of Our heart bids us conceive and hope that the day is not far distant when the Eastern Churches, so illustrious in their ancient faith and glorious past, will return to the fold they have abandoned.  We hope it all the more, that the distance separating them from Us is not so great: nay, with some few exceptions, we agree so entirely on other heads that, in defense of the Catholic Faith, we often have recourse to reasons and testimony borrowed from the teaching, the Rites, and Customs of the East.

The Principal subject of contention is the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff.  But let them look back to the early years of their existence, let them consider the sentiments entertained by their forefathers, and examine what the oldest Traditions testify, and it will, indeed, become evident to them that Christ's Divine Utterance, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, has undoubtedly been realized in the Roman Pontiffs.  Many of these latter in the first gates of the Church were chosen from the East, and foremost among them Anacletus, Evaristus, Anicetus, Eleutherius, Zosimus, and Agatho; and of these a great number, after Governing the Church in Wisdom and Sanctity, Consecrated their Ministry with the shedding of their blood.  The time, the reasons, the promoters of the unfortunate division, are well known.  Before the day when man separated what God had joined together, the name of the Apostolic See was held in Reverence by all the nations of the Christian world: and the East, like the West, agreed without hesitation in its obedience to the Pontiff of Rome, as the Legitimate Successor of St. Peter, and, therefore, the Vicar of Christ here on earth.

And, accordingly, if we refer to the beginning of the dissension, we shall see that Photius himself was careful to send his advocates to Rome on the matters that concerned him; and Pope Nicholas I sent his Legates to Constantinople from the Eternal City, without the slightest opposition, "in order to examine the case of Ignatius the Patriarch with all diligence, and to bring back to the Apostolic See a full and accurate report"; so that the history of the whole negotiation is a manifest Confirmation of the Primacy of the Roman See with which the dissension then began.  Finally, in two great Councils, the second of Lyons and that of Florence, Latins and Greeks, as is notorious, easily agreed, and all unanimously proclaimed as Dogma the Supreme Power of the Roman Pontiffs.

We have recalled those things intentionally, for they constitute an invitation to peace and reconciliation; and with all the more reason that in Our own days it would seem as if there were a more conciliatory spirit towards Catholics on the part of the Eastern Churches, and even some degree of kindly feeling.  To mention an instance, those sentiments were lately made manifest when some of Our faithful travelled to the East on a Holy Enterprise, and received so many proofs of courtesy and good-will.

Therefore, Our mouth is open to you, to you all of Greek or other Oriental Rites who are separated from the Catholic Church, We earnestly desire that each and every one of you should meditate upon the words, so full of gravity and love, addressed by Bessarion to your forefathers: "What answer shall we give to God when He comes to ask why we have separated from our Brethren: to Him Who, to unite us and bring us into One Fold, came down from Heaven, was Incarnate, and was Crucified?  What will our defense be in the eyes of posterity?  Oh, my Venerable Fathers, we must not suffer this to be, we must not entertain this thought, we must not thus so ill provide for ourselves and for our Brethren." 

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

Nor is there any reason for you to fear on that account that We or any of Our Successors will ever diminish your rights, the privileges of your Patriarchs, or the established Ritual of any one of your Churches.  It has been and always will be the intent and Tradition of the Apostolic See, to make a large allowance, in all that is right and good, for the primitive Traditions and special customs of every nation.  On the contrary, if you re-establish Union with Us, you will see how, by God's bounty, the glory and dignity of your Churches will be remarkably increased.  May God, then, in His goodness, hear the Prayer that you yourselves address to Him: "Make the schisms of the Churches cease," and "Assemble those who are dispersed, bring back those who err, and unite them to Thy Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church."  May you thus return to that one Holy Faith which has been handed down both to Us and to you from time immemorial; which your forefathers preserved untainted, and which was enhanced by the rival splendor of the Virtues, the great genius, and the sublime learning of St. Athanasius and St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzum and St. John Chrysostom, the two Saints who bore the name of Cyril, and so many other great men whose glory belongs as a common inheritance to the East and to the West. (Pope Leo XIII, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29, 1896.)

Pope Leo XIII amplified these words when addressing Protestants by noting the revolutions of the Sixteenth Century and thereafter are responsible for all the upheavals in Europe since that time as he called for those outside of the Catholic Faith to return to the unit that can be found within the bosom of Holy Mother Church:

With no less affection do We now look upon the nations who, at a more recent date, were separated from the Roman Church by an extraordinary revolution of things and circumstances. Let them forget the various events of times gone by, let them raise their thoughts far above all that is human, and seeking only truth and salvation, reflect within their hearts upon the Church as it was constituted by Christ. If they will but compare that Church with their own communions, and consider what the actual state of Religion is in these, they will easily acknowledge that, forgetful of their early history, they have drifted away, on many and important points, into the novelty of various errors; nor will they deny that of what may be called the Patrimony of Truth, which the authors of those innovations carried away with them in their desertion, there now scarcely remains to them any article of belief that is really certain and supported by Authority.

Nay, more, things have already come to such a pass that many do not even hesitate to root up the very Foundation upon which alone rests all Religion, and the hope of men, to wit, the Divine Nature of Jesus Christ, Our Savior. And again, whereas formerly they used to assert that the books of the Old and the New Testament were written under the inspiration of God, they now deny them that Authority; this, indeed, was an inevitable consequence when they granted to all the right of private interpretation. Hence, too, the acceptance of individual conscience as the sole guide and rule of conduct to the exclusion of any other: hence those conflicting opinions and numerous sects that fall away so often into the doctrines of Naturalism and Rationalism. (Pope Leo XIII, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29, 1896.)

A Brief Interjection:

Protestantism leads to the deconstructionism of Sacred Scripture and thus to atheism, which Robert Francis Prevost condemned in his “homily” in the Sistine Chapel on Friday, May 9, 2025, the Feast of Saint Gregory Nazianzen within the Octave of Saint Joseph, without referring to the following words of Pope Leo XIII 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.

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 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.) 

“Pope” Leo XIV would have to make a break with the entire false patrimony of the counterfeit church of conciliarism to be united with Pope Leo XIII, and he would have to make a break with those within his false religious sect who, like the rationalist Protestants before them, have tried to deconstruct the plain words of Holy Writ but also to deny that such things as sodomy are condemned by sins therein despite the fact that they are.

This is what Robert Francis Prevost’s friend and admirer “Father” James Martin, S.J., said a few years ago:

(LifeSiteNews) — Dissident Jesuit priest Father James Martin has claimed Christians “shouldn’t do everything” the Bible “commands” in his new “Outreach Guide to the Bible and Homosexuality.”

Martin attempts to show how an explicit defense of homosexual behavior can be reconciled with Christianity in his “guide,” citing biblical scholars who allegedly help interpret Biblical passages on homosexuality. However, the advice of Martin as well as the scholars boils down to this: Even Christians can ignore Scriptural prohibitions on homosexual behavior.

Martin laments that such biblical verses “are used against LGBTQ people over and over,” and goes on to advise that “one response” to these verses “is to see them in their historical context and remember that even devout Christians shouldn’t do everything that [the] Old Testament commands. Likewise for the Epistles in the New Testament.”

Martin’s rejection of Scriptural passages condemning homosexual behavior also appears inconsistent with his suggestion that what the Bible has to say on homosexuality matters. In his introduction to his guide, he writes, “The questions, though, remain: How can we best understand what the Bible says on homosexuality? What did these passages mean then and what do they mean today?

The writers the dissident Jesuit cites do little to clarify the question. Walter Brueggemann, who Martin refers to as a “giant in the field of biblical scholarship,” claims that St. Paul’s intention in his passage condemning homosexuality is “not fully clear.”

St. Paul writes: “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” (Rom. 1:23-27)

Brueggemann then concedes that “it is impossible to explain away” this text as well as a clear prohibition on homosexuality in Leviticus (“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22).

The scholar suggests that because Scripture expresses God’s welcome, in an apparent self-contradiction, to those who don’t keep “purity codes” (in this case, eunuchs, who are forbidden from the community of God according to Deuteronomy 23:1), that those who don’t abstain from homosexual behavior are likewise considered part of God’s covenant family, as if the moral law were equivalent to temporary Jewish ceremonial law.

Brueggemann fails to address this distinction between moral and ceremonial law, whereas Catholic apologist Trent Horn has pointed out that homosexual acts fall squarely within the moral domain, considering that their penalty under the Old Testament is death, something only assigned to sins like idolatry, murder, and adultery, not to the violation of ceremonial laws. Horn has also noted that mention of homosexual sin is “sandwiched between moral laws and not ceremonial ones.”

The very passage Brueggemann cites, in fact, indicates that eunuchs can be considered part of God’s family if they “hold fast” to His covenant, which means keeping God’s moral law and avoiding serious sin: “For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.” (Isaiah 56:4-5)

Brueggemann ambiguously concludes that “the full acceptance and embrace of LGBTQ persons follows as a clear mandate of the Gospel in our time.” It is true that, according to the CCC, that those with same-sex attraction “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.” However, it also affirms that “homosexual acts … are contrary to the natural law, that “they close the sexual act to the gift of life,” and that “under no circumstances can they be approved.”

None of the other scholars cited by Martin can refute Scripture’s clear prohibition on homosexual acts, but instead claim there may be loopholes, or, like Brueggemann, they suggest that because we are called to “welcome all,” active homosexuals must be included in the Body of Christ as well.

Fr. Martin is notorious for his open and heretical promotion of homosexual lifestyles and his celebration of homosexuality as a great “gift” for the Church. His tweets stating the homosexual Pete Buttigieg was “married” drew strong condemnation from numerous bishops and priests, with a Spanish priest denouncing him for “speaking out on social media in a scandalous way against the Catholic faith.”

Martin has a longstanding record of promoting LGBT ideology in dissent from Catholic teaching. Among his most notorious actions, Martin has promoted an image drawn from a series of blasphemous, homoerotic works, showing Christ as a homosexual, promoted same-sex civil unions, and has described viewing God as male as “damaging.” (Fr. James Martin on homosexuality: ‘Christians shouldn’t do everything’ the Bible ‘commands’. Also see Victims’ group alleges Pope Leo XIV mishandled sexual abuse cases involving priests in Chicago and Peru.)

Where can one begin with such utter apostasy in support of that which is hideous in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity, as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church?

I suppose that first, one can reiterate that men such as James Martin and his cohort of “biblical scholars” believe in a deity that is nothing other than a projection of their own perverse imaginations.

Second, James Martin and his cohort of “biblical scholars” do not believe that sodomite behavior is inherently sinful. Quite the contrary, they believe it is a normal and natural expression of “love” and should be accepted as such. As they truly sick and twisted minds have convinced themselves of such hideous fables, it should be evident that anyone who can attempt to ignore the plain words of Holy Writ that contradict their fables is, humanly speaking, any capacity to see the error of their ways. They believe in sodomy, and they who are headed to be damned believe that Sacred Scripture can be damned so as not wound their own guilty consciences and those of the hardened sinners whose evil ways they seek to indemnify at every turn.

Third, leaving aside Lifesite News’s constant references to the heretical Catechism of the Catholic Church, a document that is absolutely irrelevant to believing Catholics, it must be noted that there is no such thing as “LGBTQ” people, only human beings who choose to perversely use the gift that God has given to them for the continuation of the species and to unite one man and one woman in bond of Holy Matrimony that is dissolved only upon the death of one of the spouses.

Fourth, Sacred Scripture contains salutary warnings to fallen creatures to do good and to avoid evil, and sodomy, as Holy Mother Church teaches, is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Here is the litany of such quotations once again:

And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done. (Genesis 1: 26-30.)

[13] If any one lie with a man as with a woman, both have committed an abomination, let them be put to death: their blood be upon them. [14] If any man after marrying the daughter, marry her mother, he hath done a heinous crime: he shall be burnt alive with them: neither shall so great an abomination remain in the midst of you. [15] He that shall copulate with any beast or cattle, dying let him die, the beast also ye shall kill. (Leviticus 20: 13-15.)

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)

[1] Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James: to them that are beloved in God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called. [2] Mercy unto you, and peace, and charity be fulfilled. [3] Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. [4] For certain men are secretly entered in, (who were written of long ago unto this judgment,) ungodly men, turning the grace of our Lord God into riotousness, and denying the only sovereign Ruler, and our Lord Jesus Christ. [5] I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not:

[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.

[11] Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain: and after the error of Balaam they have for reward poured out themselves, and have perished in the contradiction of Core. [12] These are spots in their banquets, feasting together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, [13] Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever. [14] Now of these Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: Behold, the Lord cometh with thousands of his saints, [15] To execute judgment upon all, and to reprove all the ungodly for all the works of their ungodliness, whereby they have done ungodly, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against God. 

[16] These are murmurers, full of complaints, walking according to their own desires, and their mouth speaketh proud things, admiring persons for gain' s sake. [17] But you, my dearly beloved, be mindful of the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, [18] Who told you, that in the last time there should come mockers, walking according to their own desires in ungodlinesses. [19] These are they, who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit. [20] But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, 

[21] Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto life everlasting. [22] And some indeed reprove, being judged:[23] But others save, pulling them out of the fire. And on others have mercy, in fear, hating also the spotted garment which is carnal. [24] Now to him who is able to preserve you without sin, and to present you spotless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,[25] To the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and magnificence, empire and power, before all ages, and now, and for all ages of ages. Amen. (Jude 1-25.)

There are no “loopholes” in these passages.

This all reminds me of the March 22, 1931, editorial in The Washington Post that I have quoted many times on this site:

The Federal Council of Churches in America some time ago appointed a committee on "marriage and the home," which has now submitted a report favoring a "careful and restrained" use of contraceptive devices to regulate the size of families. The committee seems to have a serious struggle with itself in adhering to Christian doctrine while at the same time indulging in amateurish excursions in the field of economics, legislation, medicine, and sociology. The resulting report is a mixture of religious obscurantism and modernistic materialism which departs from the ancient standards of religion and yet fails to blaze a path toward something better.

The mischief that would result from an an attempt to place the stamp of church approval upon any scheme for "regulating the size of families" is evidently quite beyond the comprehension of this pseudo-scientific committee. It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of human birth. The church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the “scientific” production of human souls. Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee’s report if carried into effect would lead to the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution, by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be “careful and restrained” is preposterous. If the churches are to become organizations for political and 'scientific' propaganda they should be honest and reject the Bible, scoff at Christ as an obsolete and unscientific teacher, and strike out boldly as champions of politics and science as substitutes for the old-time religion. ("Forgetting Religion," Editorial, The Washington Post, March 22, 1931.)

There is no degrading practice that is beyond the capacity of James Martin and his “biblical scholars” to see as inconsonant with personal sanctity. What matters is “love” even though their conception of “love” is pure sentimentality having nothing to do with the nature of God’s love for us. Persistence in Mortal Sins is incompatible with a true love of God, and those who reaffirm such sinners in their lives of perdition will join them in hellfire for all eternity as it is a wicked thing to “accompany” such people while refusing to exhort them to repentance and a conversion life so that they can save their souls.

In spite of this (or perhaps because of it), Robert Francis Prevost has “retweeted” various of James Martin’s “insights” and has a made a point of using Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s own codewords of “building bridges” and being “inclusive” to indicate that, as I noted in, he is in concord with much of his predecessor’s false “mercy” contained within Amoris Laetitia, March 19, 2016.

It is thus not for nothing that “Father” James Martin has expressed nothing but hopefulness for the new anti-pontificate of “Pope” Leo XIV:

Pro-LGBT Jesuit James Martin has given a ringing endorsement for Leo XIV.

Over the last 24 hours, Martin, who is in Rome, has published multiple videos and issued several written social media posts expressing gratitude after Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, was elected pope on Thursday.

“He’s committed to continuing this process [of Synodality] of Pope Francis to make the Church more listening, more welcoming, and more inclusive,” Martin said in a video on X today.   

In another post, Martin, who attended the 2024 Synod with Prevost and even sat at his table, said, “I know Pope Leo XIV to be a kind, open, humble, modest, decisive, hard-working, straightforward, trustworthy, and down-to-earth man. A brilliant choice. May God bless him.”

During his first public remarks on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Thursday, Leo indeed stated his desire to continue Francis’ agenda.

“To all of you, brothers and sisters from Rome, from Italy, from all over the world, we want to be a synodal Church, a Church that walks, a Church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close especially to those who suffer,” he said.

Earlier today, Martin released a video sharing “six things to know” about Leo. He gleefully reported that he had a “great background” in Peru and said that he is well versed in the Church’s social teaching, which Martin argued “signals a desire to be with the poor, to be with labor, and to be with migrants and refugees.”

Martin and Pope Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh were the subject of an article that appeared in Spanish website InfoVaticana recently.

The article, written by Jaime Gurpegui and re-published on journalist Edward Pentin’s Substack blog in English, recounts Gerpegui’s interaction with the pair.

“While strolling around Borgo Pio, I ran into none other than Jesuit James Martin and Briton Austen Ivereigh, two of the most enthusiastic supporters of Pope Francis’ pontificate and tireless defenders of the synodal, inclusive, and dialogue-oriented approach,” he said.

Gerpegui noted that Martin was not interested in speaking to him but that Ivereigh had some terse words about his reporting on then-Cardinal Prevost.

“Very interesting campaign you’re running against Prevost,” he reportedly said.

Gerpegui denied he was doing anything other than trying to expose past allegations leveled at Prevost and that he was only acting “against the culture of cover-up in the Church.”

Gerpegui then stated that the interaction “left no doubt: Prevost was their man, the candidate in whom they had placed all their hopes.”

To learn more about Leo XIV and his past, click here or here. (Jesuit James Martin says Leo XIV is 'committed' to making the Church 'more inclusive' - LifeSite.)

Still looking for “clues?”

Guess what?

The news report quoted just above is a rather important one.

Returning to Pope Leo XIII’s Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae for a moment before concluding part one of this commentary, it is important to note that the thirteenth pope named Leo sought, as true popes have done consistently to exhort non-Catholics to return or be converted to the Catholic Church while stressing the calamities in the world that occurred by their persistence in the falsehoods of Protestantism:

Therefore it is, that having lost all hope of an agreement in their persuasions, they now proclaim and recommend a union of brotherly love. And rightly, too, no doubt, for we should all be united by the bond of mutual Charity. Our Lord Jesus Christ enjoined it most emphatically, and wished that this love of one another should be the mark of His Disciples. But how can hearts be united in perfect Charity where minds do not agree in Faith?

It is on this account that many of those We allude to men of sound judgment and seeking after Truth, have looked to the Catholic Church for the sure way of salvation; for they clearly understand that they could never be united to Jesus Christ, as their Head if they were not members of His Body, which is the Church; nor really acquire the True Christian Faith if they rejected the Legitimate teaching confided to Peter and his Successors. Such men as these have recognized in the Church of Rome the Form and Image of the True Church, which is clearly made manifest by the Marks that God, her Author, placed upon her: and not a few who were possessed with penetrating judgment and a special talent for historical research, have shown forth in their remarkable writings the uninterrupted succession of the Church. of Rome from the Apostles, the integrity of her Doctrine, and the consistency of her Rule and Discipline.

Another Brief Interjection:

Pope Leo XIII was referring to such Oxford Movement converts as Father Frederick William Faber, Father Gerard Manley Hopkins S.J., John Henry Cardinal Newman, Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Monsignors Robert Hugh Benson and Ronald Knox, among so many others.

Returning now to Pope Leo XIII’s exhortation to Protestants:

With the example of such men before you, Our heart appeals to you even more than Our words: to you, Our Brethren, who for three centuries and more differ from Us on Christian Faith; and to you all likewise, who in later times, for any reason whatsoever, have turned away from Us: Let us all meet in the Unity of Faith and of the Knowledge of the Son of God. Suffer that We should invite you to the Unity which has ever existed in the Catholic Church and can never fail; suffer that We should lovingly hold out Our hand to you. The Church, as the common mother of all, has long been calling you back to her; the Catholics of the world await you with brotherly love, that you may render Holy Worship to God together with us, united in perfect Charity Worship to God together with us, united in perfect charity by the profession of one Gospel, One Faith and One Hope.

To complete the harmony of this most desired unity, it remains for Us to address all those throughout the world whose salvation has long been the object of Our thoughts and watchful cares; We mean Catholics, whom the profession of the Roman Faith, while it renders them obedient to the Apostolic See, preserves in Union with Jesus Christ. There is no need to exhort them to True and Holy Unity, since through the Divine Goodness they already possess it; nevertheless, they must be admonished, lest under pressure of the growing perils on all sides around them, through negligence or indolence they should lose this great Blessing of God. For this purpose, let them take this Rule of thought and action, as the occasion may require, from those instructions which at other times We have addressed to Catholic people, either collectively or individually; and above all, let them lay down for themselves as a Supreme Law, to yield obedience in all things to the teaching and Authority of the Church, in no narrow or mistrustful spirit, but with their whole soul and promptitude of will.

On this account let them consider how injurious to Christian Unity is that error, which in various forms of opinion has oft-times obscured, nay, even destroyed the True Character and idea of the Church. For by the Will and Ordinance of God, its Founder, it is a Society perfect in its kind, whose Office and Mission it is to school mankind in the Precepts and Teachings of the Gospel, and by safeguarding the integrity of Morals and the exercise of Christian Virtue, to lead men to that happiness which is held out to every one in Heaven. And since it is, as we have said, a perfect Society, therefore it is endowed with a living Power and efficacy which is not derived from any external source, but in virtue of the Ordinance of God and its own Constitution, inherent in its very nature; for the same reason it has an inborn Power of making Laws, and Justice requires that in its exercise it should be dependent on no one; it must likewise have freedom in other matters appertaining to its rights. . . .

There is likewise a great danger threatening unity on the part of that association which goes by the name of Freemasons, whose fatal influence for a long time past oppresses Catholic nations in particular. Favored by the agitations of the times, and waxing insolent in its power and resources and success, it strains every nerve to consolidate its sway and enlarge its sphere. It has already sallied forth from its hiding-places, where it hatched its plots, into the throng of cities, and as if to defy the Almighty, has set up its throne in this very city of Rome, the Capital of the Catholic world. But what is most disastrous is, that wherever it has set its foot it penetrates into all ranks and departments of the commonwealth, in the hope of obtaining at last supreme control. This is, indeed, a great calamity: for its depraved principles and iniquitous designs are well known. Under the pretence of vindicating the rights of man and of reconstituting society, it attacks Christianity; it rejects revealed Doctrine, denounces practices of Piety, the Divine Sacraments, and every Sacred thing as superstition; it strives to eliminate the Christian Character from Marriage and the family and the education of youth, and from every form of instruction, whether public or private, and to root out from the minds of men all respect for Authority, whether human or Divine. On its own part, it preaches the worship of nature, and maintains that by the principles of nature are truth and probity and justice to be measured and regulated. In this way, as is quite evident, man is being driven to adopt customs and habits of life akin to those of the heathen, only more corrupt in proportion as the incentives to sin are more numerous.

Although We have spoken on this subject in the strongest terms before, yet We are led by Our Apostolic watchfulness to urge it once more, and We repeat Our warning again and again, that in face of such an eminent peril, no precaution, howsoever great, can be looked upon as sufficient. May God in His Mercy bring to naught their impious designs; nevertheless, let all Christians know and understand that the shameful yoke of Freemasonry must be shaken off once and for all; and let them be the first to shake it off who are most galled by its oppression–the men of Italy and of France. With what weapons and by what method this may best be done We Ourselves have already pointed out: the victory cannot be doubtful to those who trust in that Leader Whose Divine Words still remain in all their force: I have overcome the world.

Were this twofold danger averted, and government and States restored to the Unity of Faith, it is wonderful what efficacious remedies for evils and abundant store of benefits would ensue. We will touch upon the principal ones.

The first regards the Dignity and Office of the Church. She would receive that Honor which is her due and she would go on her way, free from envy and strong in her liberty, as the Minister of Gospel Truth and Grace to the notable welfare of States. For as she has been given by God as a Teacher and Guide to the human race, she can contribute assistance which is peculiarly adapted to direct even the most radical transformations of time to the common good, to solve the most complicated questions, and to promote uprightness and justice, which are the most solid foundations of the commonwealth.

Moreover there would be a marked increase of union among the nations, a thing most desirable to ward off the horrors of war.

We behold the condition of Europe. For many years past peace has been rather an appearance than a reality. Possessed with mutual suspicions, almost all the nations are vying with one another in equipping themselves with military armaments. Inexperienced youths are removed from paternal direction and control, to be thrown amid the dangers of the soldier’s life; robust young men are taken from agriculture or ennobling studies or trade of the arts to be put under arms. Hence the treasures of States are exhausted by the enormous expenditure, the national resources are frittered away, and private fortunes impaired; and this, as it were, armed peace, which now prevails, cannot last much longer. Can this be the normal condition of human society? Yet we cannot escape from this situation, and obtain True Peace, except by the aid of Jesus Christ. For to repress ambition and covetousness and envy–the chief instigators of war–nothing is more fitted than the Christian Virtues and, in particular, the Virtue of Justice; for, by its exercise, both the law of nations and the faith of treaties may be maintained inviolate, and the bonds of brotherhood continue unbroken, if men are but convinced that Justice exalteth a nation. (Pope Leo XII, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 24, 1894.)

No conciliar “pope” has ever spoken in such a way and none will ever do so, including “Pope” Leo XIV, who has misunderstood Pope Leo XIII’s desire to “build bridges” with the modern world that was based not on any kind of concession to the anti-Incarnational errors Modernity but an attempt to recall all men and nations to the one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

There is one final point to be made in part one of this commentary, and it concerns Pope Leo XIII’s treatment of the condition of the Catholic Church here in the United States of America.

Pope Leo XIII was trained in the diplomatic service and thus tried to exhort the American bishops to preach about his encyclical letters on the civil state and religious liberty. Thus, he wrote to them in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, to congratulate the American bishops on the centenary of the establishment of the American hierarchy. Pope Leo praised what he could about the natural virtues of George Washington and of a Constitution that meant to provide for a well-ordered society and that was unopposed to the Catholic Church.

Then, however, Pope Leo XIII gently but firmly criticized the separation of Church and State in the United States of America, explaining that the fruitfulness of the Church in this county was the work of God the Holy Ghost, not the American Constitution, and there would a more abundant growth if Church and State were united in a concord of cooperation to advance the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father. God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven:

The main factor, no doubt, in bringing things into this happy state were the ordinances and decrees of your synods, especially of those which in more recent times were convened and confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See. But, moreover (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge), thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

The late Dr. Justin Walsh understood James Cardinal Gibbons' 1887 sermon in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere for exactly what it was: heresy in the making. Dr. Walsh explained in an article in The Angelus magazine how Pope Leo XIII's Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, was a complete repudiation of the Gibbons view of religious liberty:

It was clear by 1895 that Americanist views were incompatible with orthodox Catholicism. In the spiritual realm [Bishop John] Keane was hell-bent on fostering interdenominational congresses. In the temporal realm Ireland, and to a lesser extent Gibbons, had peculiar penchants for meddling in things better left alone by Churchmen. In such a situation action by Rome was inevitable. It came on January 6 when Leo XIII addressed Longinqua Oceani to American bishops.

The Pope began by noting that the United States had a "good Constitution" and as a result Catholicism was unhindered, protected alike by law and the impartial administration of justice. Nonetheless the Holy Father warned...:

...it would be an error to conclude that America furnishes an example of the ideal condition for the Church or that it is always lawful and expedient that civil and religious affairs should be disjoined and kept apart....

According to the Pope, in a formal letter addressed to all American bishops, it would be an error to say that religious liberty and the separation of Church and State were beneficial to the Catholic Church. In explicit refutation of Gibbons's notion that American liberty caused the Church to "blossom like a rose," the Pope asserted that if the Catholic religion "is safe among you and is even blessed with increase" it was "entirely due to the divine fruitfulness of the Church." He concluded tellingly that "the fruit would be still more abundant if the Church enjoyed not only liberty but the favor of...laws and...protection of the public power."13

Few, if any, heeded the Holy Father's warnings. They redoubled their efforts, with immediately dire consequences for Denis O'Connell and John Keane. O'Connell fell first when, in the summer of 1895, he was removed as rector of the North American College. His cohorts unsuccessfully defended him, although Gibbons did succeed in keeping him in Rome as rector of the Cardinal's titular church. From this vantage point O'Connell became "a kind of liaison officer of the American hierarchy, and more particularly its left wing" until he returned to the US in 1903. Catholic liberals claim that "the suppositious liberalism of the Catholic University" was responsible for the dismissal in 1896 of John J. Keane. In fact the liberalism of neither the CUA nor its rector was "suppositious." As the California Volksfreund noted, "It was clear enough from the beginning that Americanism was interwoven with the plan for the...University." This newspaper called instead for something that Keane could never provide: "a Catholic University with Catholic professors [where] the doctrine of the Catholic, and not of an American Church, is taught. (Dr. Justin Walsh, Heresy Blossoms Like a Rose.)

As has been noted on this site many times, whatever framework of order existed under the Constitution of the United States of America was bound to collapse over the course of time. This is especially the case as it was the Actual Graces that flowed out into the world from the Masses offered by countless thousands of true priests that upheld as much social order and comity that existed prior to the spigot of such graces being shut off as a result of the liturgical barrenness of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service.

Moreover, Pope Leo XIII explained later in Longiqua Oceani, which contained subtle rebukes on various points, that the American bishops had to teach his encyclical letters on the civil state and human liberty that he knew were not being taught from Catholic pulpits or in Catholic schools, colleges or universities:

15. As regards civil affairs, experience has shown how important it is that the citizens should be upright and virtuous. In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied with the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs. On this whole subject there are to be found, as you know, in the encyclical letters written by Us from time to time in the course of Our pontificate, many things which Catholics should attend to and observe. In these writings and expositions We have treated of human liberty, of the chief Christian duties, of civil government, and of the Christian constitution of States, drawing Our principles as well from the teaching of the Gospels as from reason. They, then, who wish to be good citizens and discharge their duties faithfully may readily learn from Our Letters the ideal of an upright life. In like manner, let the priests be persistent in keeping before the minds of the people the enactments of the Third Council of Baltimore, particularly those which inculcate the virtue of temperance, the frequent use of the sacraments and the observance of the just laws and institutions of the Republic. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

To amplify this point, it should be pointed out again that the Governor of the State of New York, Alfred Emanuel Smith, responded as follows in 1927 when he had heard that a Protestant lawyer, Charles Marshall, who was very well-acquainted with papal encyclical letters on the civil state even though he rejected their content and authority entirety, had written an article stating that Smith, who was considering a second bid for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1928, was bound to obey Pope Pius XI’s encyclical letter on the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Quas Primas:

“What the hell is an encyclical?” (Vatican II and American Politics.)

Very mindful of the Americanism being taught by Father Thomas Isaac Hecker of the Society of Saint Paul, it was just four years later, his patience with some of the American bishops having run short, that he lowered the boom to expose the Americanist heresy as desire to have a Church in the United States that is different than which exists in the rest of the world:

We cannot consider as altogether blameless the silence which purposely leads to the omission or neglect of some of the principles of Christian doctrine, for all the principles come from the same Author and Master, “the Only Begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father.”-John i, I8. They are adapted to all times and all nations, as is clearly seen from the words of our Lord to His apostles: “Going, therefore, teach all nations; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.”-Matt. xxviii, 19. Concerning this point the Vatican Council says: “All those things are to be believed with divine and catholic faith which are contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by her ordinary and universal magisterium, proposes for belief as having been divinely revealed.”-Const. de fide, Chapter iii.

Let it be far from anyone’s mind to suppress for any reason any doctrine that has been handed down. Such a policy would tend rather to separate Catholics from the Church than to bring in those who differ. There is nothing closer to our heart than to have those who are separated from the fold of Christ return to it, but in no other way than the way pointed out by Christ.

The rule of life laid down for Catholics is not of such a nature that it cannot accommodate itself to the exigencies of various times and places. (VOL. XXIV-13.) The Church has, guided by her Divine Master, a kind and merciful spirit, for which reason from the very beginning she has been what St. Paul said of himself: “I became all things to all men that I might save all.”

History proves clearly that the Apostolic See, to which has been entrusted the mission not only of teaching but of governing the whole Church, has continued “in one and the same doctrine, one and the same sense, and one and the same judgment,” — Const. de fide, Chapter iv.

But in regard to ways of living she has been accustomed to so yield that, the divine principle of morals being kept intact, she has never neglected to accommodate herself to the character and genius of the nations which she embraces.

Who can doubt that she will act in this same spirit again if the salvation of souls requires it? In this matter the Church must be the judge, not private men who are often deceived by the appearance of right. In this, all who wish to escape the blame of our predecessor, Pius the Sixth, must concur. He condemned as injurious to the Church and the spirit of God who guides her the doctrine contained in proposition lxxviii of the Synod of Pistoia, “that the discipline made and approved by the Church should be submitted to examination, as if the Church could frame a code of laws useless or heavier than human liberty can bear.”

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state. But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state.

In the apostolic letters concerning the constitution of states, addressed by us to the bishops of the whole Church, we discussed this point at length; and there set forth the difference existing between the Church, which is a divine society, and all other social human organizations which depend simply on free will and choice of men.

It is well, then, to particularly direct attention to the opinion which serves as the argument in behalf of this greater liberty sought for and recommended to Catholics.

It is alleged that now the Vatican decree concerning the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff having been proclaimed that nothing further on that score can give any solicitude, and accordingly, since that has been safeguarded and put beyond question a wider and freer field both for thought and action lies open to each one. But such reasoning is evidently faulty, since, if we are to come to any conclusion from the infallible teaching authority of the Church, it should rather be that no one should wish to depart from it, and moreover that the minds of all being leavened and directed thereby, greater security from private error would be enjoyed by all. And further, those who avail themselves of such a way of reasoning seem to depart seriously from the over-ruling wisdom of the Most High-which wisdom, since it was pleased to set forth by most solemn decision the authority and supreme teaching rights of this Apostolic See-willed that decision precisely in order to safeguard the minds of the Church’s children from the dangers of these present times.

These dangers, viz., the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world, have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church’s teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty.

We, indeed, have no thought of rejecting everything that modern industry and study has produced; so far from it that we welcome to the patrimony of truth and to an ever-widening scope of public well-being whatsoever helps toward the progress of learning and virtue. Yet all this, to be of any solid benefit, nay, to have a real existence and growth, can only be on the condition of recognizing the wisdom and authority of the Church. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

In other words, Pope Leo XIII understood that Catholics were being converted by the ethos of Americanism to view Holy Mother Church through the eyes of the world rather than to view the world through the eyes of the Holy Faith even though they did not realize that this was the case, making the matter all the more grave to souls and even for the common temporal good of the nation itself. The Americanist bishops believed that there had to be an “accommodation” with the spirit of the world, a point, of course, that has been made on this site endless numbers of times and is the thesis of volume one of Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics.)

None other than the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, who, of course, understood in the 1960s that it was not possible, humanly speaking, to realize the Social Reign of Christ the United States of America given the firm grip that error had on the mind of most Americans, although he was always unyielding in his defense of the Church’s true social teaching, explained that the attempt to historicize Catholic teaching did indeed have roots in Americanism, citing specifically Pope Leo XIII’s Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae in doing so.

Monsignor Fenton explained the problem in a treatise on the background of what led Pope Saint Pius X to issue The Oath Against Modernism on September 1, 1910, emphasizing the importance of the sainted pontiff’s introductory text to the Oath itself:

The Modernists and their most influential sympathizers were, in great part, drawn from the ranks of the Catholic clergy. Thus they were, in the words of the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum, the "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." These Catholics who taught or favored Modernism were the men whose influence within the true Church of Jesus Christ St. Pius X sought to counter by the teaching and the directives contained in the Sacrorum antistitum.

(6) Finally, in the introduction to this famous Motu proprio, St. Pius X makes it very clear indeed that the Bishops of the Catholic Church were bound in conscience by the obligations of their office to act energetically against this teaching that contradicted the divinely revealed truth proposed as such by the true Church. The "defence of the Catholic faith" and strenuous efforts "to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss" are definitely not works of supererogation. These are the duties prescribed by Our Lord Himself for the leaders of the Church, which He has purchased by His blood.

The conclusion to this document, the last of the three great anti-Modernist declarations issued by the Holy See during the reign of St. Pius X, is even more enlightening than the introduction. In this we see how St. Pius X enunciated, more clearly than in any other document, the most fundamental position of the Modernists. The text of this conclusion follows:

Moved by the seriousness of the evil that is increasing every day, an evil, which We cannot put off confronting without the most grave danger, We have decided to issue and to repeat these commands. For it is no longer a case, as it was in the beginning, of dealing with disputants who come forward in the clothing of sheep. Now we are faced with open and bitter enemies from within our own household, who, in agreement with the outstanding opponents of the Church, are working for the overthrow of the faith. They are men whose audacity against the wisdom that has come down from heaven increases daily. They arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men.

To counter such attempts against the evangelical doctrine and the ecclesiastical tradition, there will never be sufficient vigilance or too much severity on the part of those to whom the faithful care of the sacred deposit has been entrusted. (Sacrosanctum Antistitum: The Background of The Oath Against Modernism.)

One can see very clearly that Pope Saint Pius X’s introduction to The Oath Against Modernism stands as a stinging rebuke to the “living tradition” of Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II and, of course, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict’s philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned “hermeneutic of continuity” as well as the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s complete embrace of dogmatic evolutionism by misrepresenting the teaching of Saint Vincent Lerins as explained earlier in this commentary.

Our true popes have embraced our true popes’ constant condemnations of unbridled religious liberty and separation of Church and State while the conciliar “popes” have praised these errors.

To wit, Pope Saint Pius X condemned the separation of Church and State in Portugal ninety-nine years before Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Bendict XVI specifically praised it while in Portugal to further deconstruct Our Lady’s Fatima Message and even to cast into doubt the actual fact of Our Lady’s apparitions to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, that began one hundred eight years in two days, that is, on May 13, 1917:

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

3. At the outset, the absurd and monstrous character of the decree of which We speak is plain from the fact that it proclaims and enacts that the Republic shall have no religion, as if men individually and any association or nation did not depend upon Him who is the Maker and Preserver of all things; and then from the fact that it liberates Portugal from the observance of the Catholic religion, that religion, We say, which has ever been that nation's greatest safeguard and glory, and has been professed almost unanimously by its people. So let us take it that it has been their pleasure to sever that close alliance between Church and State, confirmed though it was by the solemn faith of treaties. Once this divorce was effected, it would at least have been logical to pay no further attention to the Church, and to leave her the enjoyment of the common liberty and rights which belong to every citizen and every respectable community of peoples. Quite otherwise, however, have things fallen out. This decree bears indeed the name of Separation, but it enacts in reality the reduction of the Church to utter want by the spoliation of her property, and to servitude to the State by oppression in all that touches her sacred power and spirit. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

That the Holy See made an accommodation to the reality caused by the Portuguese decree of separation of Church and State and had its property and many of its privileges restored in the Concordat  of 1940 in no way justifies the revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King in Portugal wrought by the Judeo-Masonic and socialistic forces there thirty years previously.

Holy Mother Church has long sought to accommodate herself to the concrete realities of any given situation in which her children find themselves so that she can continue her work of teaching and preaching and sanctification without the hindrance of the civil state. To reach a concordat that recognizes the reality of a forced separation of Church and State is not the same thing as endorsing that false thesis or to praise the free flow of false ideas and organizations that have occurred in its wake.

Pope Saint Pius X, far from praising a revolution that suppressed much of the Church's liberties for thirty years prior to the Concordat of 1940, understood that the life of the Church and thus the good of souls in Portugal would be irreparably harmed by the decree of separation of Church and State:

The way in which the Portuguese law binds and fetters the liberty of the Church is scarcely credible, so repugnant is it to the methods of these modern days and to the public proclamation of all liberty. It is decreed under the heaviest penalties that the acts of the Bishops shall on no account be printed and that not even within the walls of the churches shall there be any announcement made to the people except by leave of the Republic. It is, moreover, forbidden to perform any ceremony outside the precincts of the sacred buildings without permission from the Republic, to go round in procession, to wear sacred vestments or even the cassock. Furthermore, it is forbidden to place any sign which savors of the Catholic religion not only on public monuments, but even on private buildings; but there is no prohibition at all against so exposing what is offensive to Catholics. Similarly, it is unlawful to form associations for the fostering of religion and piety; indeed societies of this sort are placed on a level with the criminal associations which are formed for evil purposes. And whilst on the one hand all citizens are allowed to employ their means according to their pleasure, on the other, Catholics are, against all justice and equity, placed under restrictions like these if they wish to bequeath something for prayers for the dead, or the upkeep of divine worship; and such bequests already made are impiously diverted to other purposes in utter violation of the wills and wishes of the testators. In fine, the Republic -- and this is harshest and gravest stroke of all -- goes so far as to invade the domain of the authority of the Church, and to make provisions on points which, as they concern the constitution of the priesthood, necessarily claim the special care of the Church. We speak of the formation and training of young ecclesiastics. For not only does the Decree compel ecclesiastical students to pursue their scientific and literary studies which precede theology in the public lycees where, by reason of a spirit of hostility to God and the Church, the integrity of their faith plainly is exposed to the greatest peril; but the Republic even interferes in the domestic life and discipline of the Seminaries, and arrogates the right of appointing the professors, of approving of the textbooks and of regulating the sacred studies of the Clerics. Thus are the old decrees of the Regalists revived and enforced; but what was grievous arrogance whilst there was concord between Church and State, is it not now, when the State will have nothing to do with Church, repugnant and full of absurdity? And what is to be said of the fact that this law is positively framed to deprave the morals of the clergy and to provoke them to abandon their superiors? For fixed pensions are assigned to those who have been suspended from their functions by the authority of the Bishops, and benefices are given to those priests who in miserable forgetfulness of their duty shall have dared to contract marriage; and what is still more shameful to record, it extends the same benefits to be shared and enjoyed by any children there may be of such a sacrilegious union. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

This is one of the many reasons that the conciliar revolutionaries hate Our Lady’s Fatima Message and have worked very hard to deconstruct it in order to present their own false narrative and to desecrate the Shrine of the Apparitions with offerings made to the devil by Hindu “priests.” And let us remember that one of the chief architects of the conciliar warfare on Our Lady’s Fatima Message is none other than Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (see We Must Accept What the Rationalists Reject), who praised the very thing that had been condemned by Pope Saint Pius X, namely, separation of Church and State in Portugal:

From a wise vision of life and of the world, the just ordering of society follows. Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life. The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom. What matters is the value attributed to the problem of meaning and its implication in public life. By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church, to which the two concordats of 1940 and 2004 would give shape, in cultural settings and ecclesial perspectives profoundly marked by rapid change. For the most part, the sufferings caused by these transformations have been faced with courage. Living amid a plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks requires a journey to the core of one’s being and to the nucleus of Christianity so as to reinforce the quality of one’s witness to the point of sanctity, and to find mission paths that lead even to the radical choice of martyrdom. (Official Reception at Lisbon Portela International Airport, Tuesday, May 11, 2010.)

Apostasy.

"By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place in Portugal in 1910 opened up a new area of freedom for the Church"?

Pluralism strengthens sanctity within the soul?

Guess again.

Surgical baby-killing up to the tenth week of a baby’s development in his mother’s womb had been “legalized” in Portugal in 2007, fully three years before Ratzinger/Benedict made his “pastoral pilgrimage” to celebrate the “civilization of love.” Although some restrictions were put on abortion by the “center-right” Portuguese government in 2015, baby-killing still remains legal. So, for that matter, is “marriage” between two people of the same gender.

Yet it is that Ratzinger/Benedict praised the “progress” Portugal had made as an example of the “civilization of love.”

Pope Saint Pius X gave no quarter at all to any precept of the Portuguese revolution, understanding it full well to be an attack upon Holy Mother Church and thus the good of souls:

The way in which the Portuguese law binds and fetters the liberty of the Church is scarcely credible, so repugnant is it to the methods of these modern days and to the public proclamation of all liberty. It is decreed under the heaviest penalties that the acts of the Bishops shall on no account be printed and that not even within the walls of the churches shall there be any announcement made to the people except by leave of the Republic. It is, moreover, forbidden to perform any ceremony outside the precincts of the sacred buildings without permission from the Republic, to go round in procession, to wear sacred vestments or even the cassock. Furthermore, it is forbidden to place any sign which savors of the Catholic religion not only on public monuments, but even on private buildings; but there is no prohibition at all against so exposing what is offensive to Catholics. Similarly, it is unlawful to form associations for the fostering of religion and piety; indeed societies of this sort are placed on a level with the criminal associations which are formed for evil purposes. And whilst on the one hand all citizens are allowed to employ their means according to their pleasure, on the other, Catholics are, against all justice and equity, placed under restrictions like these if they wish to bequeath something for prayers for the dead, or the upkeep of divine worship; and such bequests already made are impiously diverted to other purposes in utter violation of the wills and wishes of the testators. In fine, the Republic -- and this is harshest and gravest stroke of all -- goes so far as to invade the domain of the authority of the Church, and to make provisions on points which, as they concern the constitution of the priesthood, necessarily claim the special care of the Church. We speak of the formation and training of young ecclesiastics. For not only does the Decree compel ecclesiastical students to pursue their scientific and literary studies which precede theology in the public lycees where, by reason of a spirit of hostility to God and the Church, the integrity of their faith plainly is exposed to the greatest peril; but the Republic even interferes in the domestic life and discipline of the Seminaries, and arrogates the right of appointing the professors, of approving of the textbooks and of regulating the sacred studies of the Clerics. Thus are the old decrees of the Regalists revived and enforced; but what was grievous arrogance whilst there was concord between Church and State, is it not now, when the State will have nothing to do with Church, repugnant and full of absurdity? And what is to be said of the fact that this law is positively framed to deprave the morals of the clergy and to provoke them to abandon their superiors? For fixed pensions are assigned to those who have been suspended from their functions by the authority of the Bishops, and benefices are given to those priests who in miserable forgetfulness of their duty shall have dared to contract marriage; and what is still more shameful to record, it extends the same benefits to be shared and enjoyed by any children there may be of such a sacrilegious union. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

Pope Saint Pius X declared as null and void that which was praised by an antipope ninety-nine years later:

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

Thus, good readers, understand that the conciliar “popes” have rejected what the Catholic Church has always taught, doing so not as a concession to the actual state of things but an embrace in principle of the actual errors condemned by our true popes as circumstances required them to do so.

Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton recognize there was an ongoing effort in the 1950s to change the unchangeable, which is why he went to great lengths in his commentary on the background to the Oath Against Modernism to explain that the Catholic condemnation of the separation of Church and State can never be replaced or “changed” because of changing circumstances. The only thing that Holy Mother Church can do is to make concessions to the actual reality of things and not to reject her own teaching in order to show that she is “up-to-date.”

Monsignor Fenton went on to explain the connection between Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae and The Oath Against Modernism:

It is interesting to note the parallel between what St. Pius X says about the intentions of the Modernists and what his great predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, had to say about the basic premise of the errors he pointed out and condemned in his famed letter, the Testem benevolentiae. St. Pius X declares that the Modernists "arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men." And Pope Leo XIII states:

The principles on which the new opinions We have mentioned are based may be reduced to this: that in order the more easily to bring over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church ought to adapt herself somewhat to our advanced civilization, and, relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern theories and methods. Many think that this is to be understood not only with regard to the rule of life, but also to the doctrines in which the deposit of faith is contained. For they contend that it is opportune, in order to work in a more attractive way upon the wills of those who are not in accord with us, to pass over certain heads of doctrines, as if of lesser moment, or so to soften them that they may not have the same meaning which the Church has invariably held. ⁷

Thus, when we examine the actual texts of the Testimonium benevolentiae and of the Sacrorum antistitum, it becomes quite apparent that Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were engaged in combating doctrinal deviations that actually sprang from an identical principle, the fantastically erroneous assumption that the supernatural communication of the Triune God could and should be brought up to date and given a certain respectability before modern society. The men who sustained the weird teachings condemned by Pope Leo XIII, a document, which, incidentally, did not denounce any mere phantom body of doctrine, and the men who taught and protected the doctrinal monstrosities stigmatized in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, based their errors on a common foundation. The false Americanism and the heresy of Modernism were both offshoots of doctrinal liberal Catholicism.

This belief that the meaning of the Church's dogmatic message was in some way subject to change and capable of being improved and brought up to date was definitely not an explicit part of the original or the more naive stage of the liberal Catholic movement. The first components of liberal Catholicism, during the earlier days of the unfortunate Felicite De Lamenais, were religious indifferentism, some false concepts of human freedom, and the advocacy of a separation of Church and state as the ideal situation in a nation made up of members of the true Church. But, after these teachings had been forcefully repudiated by Pope Gregory XVI in his encyclical Mirari vos arbitramur, a new set of factors entered into this system. These were inserted into the fabric of liberal Catholicism because the leaders of this movement persisted in defending as legitimate Catholic doctrine this teaching, which had been clearly and vigorously condemned by the supreme power of the Catholic magisterium. Most prominent among these newer components of liberal Catholicism were minimism, doctrinal subjectivism, and an insistence that there had been and that there had to be at least some sort of change in the objective meaning of the Church's dogmatic message over the course of the centuries. 

The liberal Catholic since the time of Montalembert has been well aware of the fact that the basic theses he proposes as acceptable Catholic doctrine have been specifically and vehemently repudiated by the doctrinal authority of the Roman Church. If he is to continue to propose these teachings as a member of the Church, he is obliged by the very force of self-consistency to claim that the declarations of the magisterium, which condemned his favorite theses do not at this moment mean objectively what they meant at the time they were issued. And, if such a claim is advanced about the Mirari vos arbitramur, there is very little to prevent its being put forward on the subject of the Athanasian Creed. Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were well aware of the fact that the advocates of the false Americanism and the teachers and the protectors of the Modernist heresy were employing this same discredited tactic.

This common basis of the false doctrinal Americanism and of the Modernist heresy is, like doctrinal indifferentism itself, ultimately a rejection of Catholic dogma as a genuine supernatural message or communication from the living God Himself. It would seem impossible for anyone to be blasphemous or silly enough to be convinced, on the one hand, that the dogmatic message of the Catholic Church is actually a locutio Dei ad homines, and to imagine, on the other hand, that he, a mere creature, could in some way improve that teaching or make it more respectable. The very fact that a man would be so rash as to attempt to bring the dogma of the Church up to date, or to make it more acceptable to those who are not privileged to be members of the true Church, indicates that this individual is not actually and profoundly convinced that this dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church is a supernatural communication from the living and Triune God, the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. It would be the height of blasphemy knowingly to set out to improve or to bring up to date what one would seriously consider a genuine message from the First Cause of the universe.

The conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum brings out more clearly than any other statement of the Holy See the fact that Modernism sprang from the same basic principle, as did the false Americanism pointed out and proscribed in the Testem benevolentiae of Pope Leo XIII. (Sacrosanctum Antistitum: The Background of The Oath Against Modernism.)

Anyone who cannot understand that Monsignor Fenton’s brilliant analysis lays bare the heresies of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and of the conciliar “popes,” including the laee Ratzinger/Benedict, the supposed “restorer of Tradition,” and the equally late, Bergoglio/Francis, is not being intellectually honest.

Those who want to continue to criticize those of us who are completely unyielding in our opposition to Americanism, which was nothing other than an effort on the part of American bishops in the Nineteenth Century to “celebrate,” not merely “tolerate,” the ethos of religious liberty and separation of Church and State as harbingers of Dignitatis Humane and Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, and the “social magisterium,” if you will, of the conciliar “popes,” may do so only by ignoring the fact that Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton himself saw the direct connection between Americanism and Modernism.

Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict himself said over nineteen years ago now that the “hermeneutic of continuity” explained the “new teaching” of the “Second” Vatican Council on religious liberty and separation of Church and State:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This address is what served as the proximate motivation for me to review once again the material that I had studied periodically in the preceding two years concerning the plausibility of sedevacantism as the only logical explanation in accord with Catholic teaching to explain such heresies against the nature of dogmatic truth and such blasphemies against the martyrs of the early Church were the work of men who had lost the Catholic Faith and thus could not hold ecclesiastical office within the ranks of Holy Mother Church. In other words, Ratzinger/Benedict’s “official” endorsement of Americanism is what led me to review the fact that the problem is not with this or that particular conciliar “pope;” the problem is with a false religion based on Modernism and the “New Theology” that the conciliar “popes” have endorsed and propagated.

I will let the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton have the final words as the analysis he provided below demonstrates very clearly that the Seine and the Potomac flowed into the Tiber at the “Second” Vatican Council just as much as the Rhine and produced a “humanitarian,” “non-religious” “pope,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who an end-product of conciliarism:

In this conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum, St. Pius X expressly recognizes the fact that the Modernists and their sympathizers, the anti-anti-Modernists, were actually working, in agreement with the most-bitter enemies of the Catholic Church, for the destruction of the Catholic faith. It is interesting and highly important to note exactly what St. Pius X said. He definitely did not claim that these men were working directly to destroy the Church as a society. It is quite obvious that, given the intimate connection between the Church and the faith, a connection so close and perfect that the Church itself may be defined as the congregatio fidelium, the repudiation of the Catholic faith would inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Church. Yet, for the Modernists and for those who co-operated in their work, the immediate object of attack was always the faith itself. These individuals were perfectly willing that the Catholic Church should continue to exist as a religious society, as long as it did not insist upon the acceptance of that message which, all during the course of the previous centuries of its existence, it had proposed as a message supernaturally revealed by the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. They were willing and even anxious to retain their membership in the Catholic Church, as long as they were not obliged to accept on the authority of divine faith such unfashionable dogmas as, for example, the truth that there is truly no salvation outside of the Church.

What these men were really working for was the transformation of the Catholic Church into an essentially non-doctrinal religious body. They considered that their era would be willing to accept the Church as a kind of humanitarian institution, vaguely religious, tastefully patriotic, and eminently cultural. And they definitely intended to tailor the Church to fit the needs and the tastes of their own era.

It must be understood, of course, that the Modernists and the men who aided their efforts did not expect the Catholic Church to repudiate its age-old formulas of belief. They did not want the Church to reject or to abandon the ancient creeds, or even any of those formularies in which the necessity of the faith and the necessity of the Church are so firmly and decisively stated. What they sought was a declaration on the part of the Church's magisterium to the effect that these old formulas did not, during the first decade of the twentieth century, carry the same meaning for the believing Catholic that they had carried when these formulas had first been drawn up. Or, in other words, they sought to force or to delude the teaching authority of Christ's Church into coming out with the fatally erroneous proposition that what is accepted by divine faith in this century is objectively something different from what was believed in the Catholic Church on the authority of God revealing in previous times.

Thus the basic objective of Modernism was to reject the fact that, when he sets forth Catholic dogma, the Catholic teacher is acting precisely as an ambassador of Christ. The Modernists were men who were never quite able to grasp or to accept the truth that the teaching of the Catholic Church is, as the First Vatican Council designated the content of the Constitution Dei Films, actually "the salutary doctrine of Christ," and not merely some kind of doctrine, which has developed out of that teaching. And, in the final analysis, the position of the Modernists constituted the ultimate repudiation of the Catholic faith. If the teaching proposed by the Church as dogma is not actually and really the doctrine supernaturally revealed by God through Jesus Christ Our Lord, through the Prophets of the Old Testament who were His heralds, or through the Apostles who were His witnesses, then there could be nothing more pitifully inane than the work of the Catholic magisterium. (Sacrosanctum Antistitum: The Background of The Oath Against Modernism.)

“Pope” Leo XIV, though, does not hold to any of this.

Although Robert Francis Prevost is a native-born citizen of the United States of America, he has spent most of life in Peru.

Yet it is though, that the Americanist heresy was and remains (along with the falsehoods of the French Revolution and other currents in modern thought and practice) of the essential building blocks of the conciliar sects’ worldview, which is why it can be said that he is now the head of a sect that exists in the rest of the world that began here is the United Staes of America as Pope Leo XIII warned the longtime (1877-1921) Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland John Cardinal Gibbons near the end of Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae:

From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some “Americanism.” But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.

But the true church is one, as by unity of doctrine, so by unity of government, and she is Catholic also. Since God has placed the center and foundation of unity in the chair of Blessed Peter, she is rightly called the Roman Church, for “where Peter is, there is the church.” Wherefore, if anybody wishes to be considered a real Catholic, he ought to be able to say from his heart the selfsame words which Jerome addressed to Pope Damasus: “I, acknowledging no other leader than Christ, am bound in fellowship with Your Holiness; that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that the church was built upon him as its rock, and that whosoever gathereth not with you, scattereth.” (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

Behold!

The Church that was in America in 1899 has become the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is based on large part on Americanist errors, and it is headed now by a well-meaning, reserved and evidently pious man, Robert Francis Prevost, who is nevertheless at odds with what Pope Leo XIII taught in perfectly conformity with what had been taught prior to his papacy and with that which was by those who followed him, namely, Popes Saints Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII, each of whom wrote of the necessity of a cooperation of Church and State as follows:

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

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. --  (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

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

But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they operate, the human person is lead, not toward progress, but towards death. This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

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

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

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

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

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.)

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.

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.)

Yes, we must turn as always to Our Lady to keep us strong in our commitment to defending the integrity of the Catholic Faith without making any concessions to conciliarism, its false doctrines, its false liturgical rites, and false pastoral practices no matter how reverent, devout, properly attired and arguably that the very nice proponent of the conciliar agenda, Robert Francis Prevost, may be as the question remains thus: Is the counterfeit church of conciliarism the Catholic Church?

May we, in this month of May, the month of Our Lady, continue to pray our Rosaries each day with greater fervor and devotion so that a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter will be restored to the Throne of Saint Peter and that well-meaning men such as Robert Francis Prevost will come to recognize the truth for themselves and embrace the Catholic Faith while rejecting the conciliar revolution in its totality.

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 Nereus, Achilleus, Domitilla, and Pancratius, pray for us. 

Appendix A

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Feast of Saints Nereus, Achilleus, Pancratius, and Domitilla

So far in our Paschal Season, the choir of Martyr-Virgins has not yet offered to Jesus its crown of roses and lilies. It does so today, by presenting to him the noble Flavia Domitilla—the fairest flower of Rome, that was cut down by the sword of martyrdom in the first age of the Christian Faith. It was under the persecution of Domitian—the same that condemned John the Evangelist to be burned alive in the cauldron of boiling oil—that Flavia Domitilla was honored with banishment and death for the sake of our Redeemer, whom she had chosen as her Spouse. She was of the Imperial family, being a niece of Flavius Clemens, who adorned the Consular dignity by martyrdom. She was one of the Christians belonging to the court of the Emperor Domitian, who show us how rapidly the Religion of the poor and humble made its way to the highest classes of Roman life. A few years previous to this, St. Paul sent to the Christians of Philippi the greetings of the Christians of Nero’s palace. (Philippians 4:22)

There is still extant, not far from Rome, on the Ardeatine Way, the magnificent subterraneous Cemetery, which Flavia Domitilla ordered to be dug on her Prædium, and in which were buried the two Martyrs, Nereus and Achilleus, whom the Church honors today together with the noble Virgin, who owes her crown to them.

Nereus and Achilleus were in Domitilla’s service. [The Acts of these two Saints—which were drawn up long after their Martyrdom, and on which were formed the Lessons of today’s Office—call them “Eunuchs:” but it is a mistake of the compiler, who belongs to the 5th or 6th Century. The introduction of Eunuchs into the Imperial Court, and into the Roman families, is of a later date than the reign of Domitian.] Hearing them one day speaking on the merit of Virginity, she there and then bade farewell to all worldly pleasures, and aspired to the honor of being the Spouse of Christ. She received the Veil of consecrated Virgins from the hands of Pope St. Clement: Nereus and Achilleus had been baptized by St. Peter himself. What glorious reminiscences for one day!

The bodies of these three Saints reposed, for several centuries, in the Basilica, called the Fasciola, on the Appian Road; and we have a Homily which St. Gregory the Great preached in his Church on their Feast. The holy Pontiff dwelt on the vanity of this earth’s goods; he encouraged his audience to despise them by the example of the three Martyrs, whose Relics lay under the very Altar around which they were that day assembled. “These Saints,” said he, “before whose Tomb we are now standing, trampled, with contempt of soul, on the world and its flowers. Life was then long, health was uninterrupted, riches were abundant, parents were blessed with many children; and yet, though the world was so flourishing in itself, it had long been a withered thing in their hearts.” (Homily 28, in Evang)

Later on, the Fasciola having been almost reduced to ruins by the disasters that had befallen Rome, the bodies of the three Saints were translated, in the 13th Century, to the Church of St. Adrian, in the Forum. There they remained till the close of the 16th Century, when the great Baronius, who had been raised to the Cardinalate, with the Title of Saints Nereus and Achilleus, resolved to repair the Church that was thus entrusted to his care. Through his munificence, the naves were restored; the history of the three Martyrs was painted on the walls; the marble pulpit, from which St. Gregory preached the Homily, was brought back, and the Homily itself was graven, from beginning to end, on the back; and the Confession was enriched with mosaics and precious marbles, preparatory to its receiving the sacred Relics, of which it had been deprived for three hundred years.

Baronius felt that it was high time to put an end to the long exile of the holy Martyrs, whose honor was not made so specially dear to him. He organized a formal triumph for their return. Christian Rome excels in the art of blending together the forms of classic antiquity and the sentiments inspired by Faith. The chariot, bearing a superb canopy, under which lay the Relics of the three Martyrs, was first led to the Capitol. On reaching the top of the clivus Capitolinus, the eye met two Inscriptions, placed parallel with each other. On one were these words: “To Saint Flavia Domitilla, Virgin and Martyr of Rome, the Capitol, purified from the wicked worship of demons and restored more perfectly than by Flavius Vespasian and Domitian, Emperors, kinsmen of the Christian Virgin.” On the other: “The Senate and People of Rome to Saint Flavia Domitilla, Virgin and Martyr of Rome, who, by allowing herself to be put to death by fire, for the Faith of Christ, brought greater glory to Rome, than did her kinsmen, the Emperors Flavius Vespasian and Domitian, when, at their own expense, they restored the Capitol, that had twice suffered from fire.”

The Reliquaries of the Martyrs were then put on an altar that had been erected near the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. After being venerated by the Faithful, they were replaced on the chariot, which descended by the opposite side of the Capitol. The Procession soon reached the triumphal arch of Septimus Severus, on which were hung these two inscriptions:

“To the holy Martyrs, Flavia Domitilla, Nereus and Achilleus, the best of citizens, the Senate and People of Rome, for their having honored the Roman name by their glorious death, and won peace for the Roman commonwealth by shedding their blood.”

“To Flavia Domitilla, Nereus and Achilleus, the invincible Martyrs of Christ Jesus, the Senate and People of Rome, for their having honored the City by the noble testimony they bore to the Christian Faith.”

Following the Via Sacra, the Procession was soon in front of the triumphal Arch of Titus, the monument of God’s victory over the deicide nation. On one side there were inscribed these words: “This triumphal Arch, formerly dedicated and raised to the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasian, for his having brought the rebellious Judea under the yoke of the Roman people, is now, by the Senate and People of Rome, more auspiciously dedicated and consecrated to Flavia Domitilla, kind woman of the same Titus, for having, by her death, increased and furthered the Christian Religion.”

On the other side of the Arch, there was the following inscription:

“To Flavia Domitilla, Virgin and Martyr of Rome, kinswoman of the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasian, the Senate and People of Rome, for her having, by the shedding her blood and laying down her life for the Faith, rendered a more glorious homage to the death of Christ, than did the said Titus, when, by a divine inspiration, he destroyed Jerusalem, to avenge that same Death.”

Leaving on the left the Colosseum—the hallowed ground whereon so many Martyrs had fought the battle of Faith—they passed under the triumphal Arch of Constantine, which so eloquently speaks of the victory of Christianity, both in Rome and the Empire, and which still bears on it the name of the Flavia family, of which the first Christian Emperor was a member. The two following inscriptions were attached to the Arch.

“To Flavia Domitilla, Nereus and Achilleus, the Senate and People of Rome. On this Sacred Way—whereon so many Roman Emperors received triumphal honors for having brought various provinces into subjection to the Roman People—these Martyrs are receiving today a more glorious triumph, for that they conquered, by a greater courage, the conquerors themselves.”

“To Flavia Domitilla, the Senate and People of Rome. Twelve Emperors, her kinsman, conferred honor on the Flavia family and on Rome herself, by their deeds of fame; but she, by sacrificing all human honors and life itself, for Christ’s sake, rendered greater service to both family and City than they.”

The Procession then continued its route along the Appian Way, and at length reached the Basilica. Baronius, assisted by a great number of Cardinals, received the precious Relics, and took them with great respect to the Confession of the High Altar. Meanwhile the Choir sang this Antiphon of the Pontifical: “Come in, ye Saints of God! for a dwelling hath been prepared for you by the Lord. The faithful people have followed you on your way, that ye may intercede for them with the Majesty of the Lord. Alleluia!”

The following is the account of our three Martyrs, as given in the Liturgy.

Nereus and Achilleus, brothers, were in the service of Flavia Domitilla, and were baptized, together with her and her mother Plautilla, by St. Peter. They persuaded Domitilla to consecrate her virginity to God; in consequence of which, they were accused of being Christians, by Aurelian to whom she was betrothed. They made an admirable confession of their Faith, and were banished to the Isle of Pontia. There they were once again examined, and were condemned to be flogged. They were, shortly afterwards, taken to Terracina; and, by orders of Minucius Rufus, were hoisted on the rack and tormented with burning torches. On their resolutely declaring that, having been baptized by blessed Peter the Apostle, no tortures should ever induce them to offer sacrifice to idols, they were beheaded. Their bodies were taken to Rome, by their disciple Auspicius, Domitilla’s tutor, and were buried on the Ardeantine Way.

Flavia Domitilla, a Roman lady, and niece of the Emperors Titus and Domitian, received the holy veil of virginity from the blessed Pope Clement. She was accused of being a Christian, by Aurelian, to whom she was promised in marriage, and who was a son of the Consul Titus Aurelius. The Emperor Domitian banished her to the Isle of Pontia, where she suffered a long martyrdom in prison. She was finally taken to Terracina, where she again confessed Christ. Finding that her constancy was not to be shaken, the judge ordered the house where she lodged to be set on fire; and thus she, together with two virgins, her foster-sisters, Theodora and Euphrosyna, completed her glorious martyrdom, on the ninth of the nones of May (May 7th), during the reign of the Emperor Trajan. Their bodies were found entire, and were buried by a Deacon, named Cæsarius. But this is the day on which the bodies of the two brothers and that of Domitilla were translated from the Diaconia of Saint Adrian to the Basilica, called Fasciola.

How grand was the triumph which Rome gave to you, O holy Martyrs, so many centuries after your glorious deaths! How true it is, that there is no glory here on earth, which can bear comparison with that of the Saints! Where are now those twelve Emperors, thy kinsmen, O Domitilla? Who cares about their remains? Who even cherishes their memory? One of them was surnamed “the delight of mankind;” and now, how many are there who never heard of his existence? Another, the last of the twelve, had the glory of proclaiming the victory won by the Cross, over the Roman Empire; Christian Rome honors and loves his name; but the homage of religious devotion is not given to him, but to thee, O Domitilla, and to the two Martyrs whose names are now associated with thine.

Who does not recognize the power of Jesus’ Resurrection, in the love and enthusiasm wherewith a whole people welcome your holy Relics, O Martyrs of the Living God? Fifteen hundred years had elapsed; and yet your lifeless remains were greeted with a transport of joy, as though you yourselves were there, and living. It was because we Christians know that Jesus, who is the the first-born of the dead (Apocalypse 1:5) has risen from the grave; and that you also are one day to rise glorious like him. Therefore do the Faithful honor, by anticipation, the immortality which, at a future period, is to be given to your Bodies, slain as they were for Jesus’ sake; they already see, by faith, the future brightness which is to be imparted to your Flesh; and in all this, they are proclaiming the dignity which the Redemption has given to man, to whom Death is now but a transition to true Life, and the Tomb but a resting place where the Body is consigned, as seed to the earth, to be restored in a hundred-fold of richer beauty.

Happy they who, as the prophecy says, have washed their robes, and have made them white in the Blood of the Lamb! (Apocalypse 7:14) But happier they, says holy Church, who, after being thus purified, have mingled their own blood with that of the Divine Victim! for by so doing, they have filled up, in their flesh, those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ. (Colossians 1:24) Hence, their intercession is powerful, and we should address our prayers to them with love and confidence. Befriend us, then, O holy Martyrs Nereus, Achilleus and Domitilla! Obtain for us an ardent love for our Risen Jesus; perseverance in the New Life he has conferred upon us; detachment from the things of this world, and a determined resolution to trample them beneath our feet, should they become a danger to our eternal salvation. Pray for us, that we may be courageous in resisting our spiritual enemies, ever ready to defend our holy Faith, and earnest in our endeavors to gain that Kingdom, which is to be borne away by violence. (Matthew 11:12) Be you the Defenders of the holy Roman Church, which fervently celebrates your memory each year. You, Nereus and Achilleus, were converts of Peter; and thou, Domitilla, wast the spiritual daughter of Clement, Peter’s successor: protect the Pontiff who now governs the Church—the Pontiff in whom Peter still lives—the Pontiff, the Successor of Clement. Dispel the storms which are threatening the Cross on the Capitol, and pray for the inhabitants of Rome, that they may be staunch to the Faith. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saints Nereus, Achilleus, Pancratius, and Domitilla, May 12.)

Appendix B

Pope Leo XIII’s Dall’Alto Dell’Apostolico Seggio, October 15, 1890

The war began by the overthrow of the civil power of the Popes, the downfall of which, according to the secret intentions of the real leaders, afterwards openly avowed, was, under a political pretext, to be the means of enslaving at least, if not of destroying the supreme spiritual power of the Roman Pontiffs. — That no doubt might remain as to the true object of this warfare, there followed quickly the suppression of the Religious Orders; and thereby a great reduction in the number of evangelical laborers for the propagation of the faith amongst the heathens, and for the sacred ministry and religious service of Catholic countries. — Later, the obligation of military service was extended to ecclesiastics, with the necessary result that many and grave obstacles were put to the recruiting and due formation even of the secular Clergy. Hands were laid upon ecclesiastical property, partly by absolute confiscation, and partly by charging it with enormous burdens, so as to impoverish the Clergy and the Church, and to deprive the Church of what is necessary for its temporal support and for carrying on institutions and works in aid of its divine apostolate. This the sectaries themselves have openly declared. To lessen the influence of the Clergy and of clerical bodies, one only efficacious means must be employed: to strip them all their goods, and to reduce them to absolute poverty. So also the action of the State is of itself all directed to efface from the nation its religious and Christian character. From the laws, and from the whole of official life, every religious inspiration and idea is systematically banished, when not directly assailed. Every public manifestation of faith and of Catholic piety is either forbidden or, under vain pretenses, in a thousand ways impeded.-From the family are taken away its foundation and religious constitution by the proclaiming of civil marriage, as it is called; and also by the entirely lay education which is now demanded, from the first elements to the higher teaching of the universities, so that the rising generations, as far as this can be effected by the State, have to grow up without any idea of religion, and without the first essential notions of their duties towards God. This is to put the ax to the root. No more universal and efficacious means could be imagined of withdrawing society, and families, and individuals, from the influence of the Church and of the faith. To lay Clericalism (or Catholicism) waste in its foundations and in its very sources of life, namely, in the school and in the family: such is the authentic declaration of Masonic writers.

5. It will be said that this does not happen in Italy only, but is a system of government which States generally follow. — We answer, that this does not refute, but confirms what We are saying as to the designs and action of Freemasonry in Italy. Yes, this system is adopted and carried out wherever Freemasonry uses its impious and wicked action; and, as its action is widespread, so is this anti-Christian system widely applied. But the application becomes more speedy and general, and is pushed more to extremes, in countries where the government is more under the control of the sect and better promotes its interest.-Unfortunately, at the present time the new Italy is of the number of these countries. Not today only has it become subject to the wicked and evil influence of the sects; but for some time past they have tyrannized over it as they liked, with absolute dominion and power. Here the direction of public affairs, in what concerns religion, is wholly in conformity with the aspirations of the sects; and for accomplishing their aspirations, they find avowed supporters and ready instruments in those who hold the public power. Laws adverse to the Church and measures hostile to it are first proposed, decided, and resolved, in the secret meetings of the sect; and if anything presents even the least appearance of hostility or harm to the Church, it is at once received with favor and put forward. — Amongst the most recent facts We may mention the approval of the new penal code, in which what was most obstinately demanded, in spite of all reasons to the contrary, were the articles against the Clergy, which form for them an exceptional law, and even condemn as criminal certain actions which are sacred duties of their ministry. — The law as to pious works, by which all charitable property, accumulated by the piety and religion of our ancestors under the protection and guardianship of the Church, was withdrawn altogether from the Church’s action and control, had been for some years put forward in the meetings of the sect, precisely because it would inflict a new outrage on the Church, lessen its social influence, and suppress at once a great number of bequests made for divine worship. — Then came that eminently sectarian work, the erection of the monument to the renowned apostate of Nola, which, with the aid and favor of the government, was promoted, determined, and carried out by means of Freemasonry, whose most authorized spokesmen were not ashamed to acknowledge its purpose and to declare its meaning. Its purpose was to insult the Papacy; its meaning that, instead of the Catholic Faith, must now be substituted the most absolute freedom of examination, of criticism, of thought, and of conscience: and what is meant by such language in the mouth of the sects is well known. — The seal was put by the most explicit declarations made by the head of the government, which were to the following effect: — That the true and real conflict, which the government has the merit of understanding, is the conflict between faith and the Church on one side and free examination and reason on the other. That the Church may try to act as it has done before, to enchain anew reason and free-thought, and to prevail; but the government in this conflict declares itself openly in favor of reason as against faith, and takes upon itself the task of making the Italian State the evident expression of this reason and liberty: a sad task, which has just now been boldly reaffirmed on a like occasion.

6. In the light of such facts and such declarations as these, it is more than ever clear that the ruling idea which, as far as religion is concerned, controls the course of public affairs in Italy, is the realization of the Masonic program. We see how much has already been realized; we know how much still remains to be done; and we can foresee with certainty that, so long as the destinies of Italy are in the hands of sectarian rulers or of men subject to the sects, the realization of the program will be pressed on, more or less rapidly according to circumstances, unto its complete development. — The action of the sects is at present directed to attain the following objects, according to the votes and resolutions passed in their most important assemblies, — votes and resolutions inspired throughout by a deadly hatred of the Church. The abolition in the schools of every kind of religious instruction, and the founding of institutions in which even girls are to be withdrawn from all clerical influence whatever it may be; because the State, which ought to be absolutely atheistic, has the inalienable right and duty to form the heart and the spirit of its citizens, and no school should exist apart from its inspiration and control. — The rigorous application of all laws now in force, which aim at securing the absolute independence of civil society from clerical influence. — The strict observance of laws suppressing religious corporations, and the employment of means to make them effectual. — The regulation of all ecclesiastical property, starting from the principle that its ownership belongs to the State, and its administration to the civil power. — The exclusion of every Catholic or clerical element from all public administrations, from pious works, hospitals, and schools, from the councils which govern the destinies of the country, from academical and other unions, from companies, committees, and families, — an exclusion from everything, everywhere, and forever. Instead, the Masonic influence is to make itself felt in all the circumstances of social life, and to become master and controller of everything. — Hereby the way will be smoothed towards the abolition of the Papacy; Italy will thus be free from its implacable and deadly enemy; and Rome, which in the past was the center of universal Theocracy will in the future be the center of universal secularization, whence the Magna Charta of human liberty is to be proclaimed in the face of the whole world. Such are the authentic declarations, aspirations, and resolutions, of Freemasons or of their assemblies.

7. Without exaggeration, this is the present condition and the future prospect of religion in Italy. To shrink from seeing the gravity of this would be a fatal error. To recognize it as it is, to confront it with evangelical prudence and fortitude, to infer the duties which it imposes on all Catholics, and upon us especially who as Pastors have to watch over them and guide them to salvation, is to enter into the views of Providence, to do a work of wisdom and pastoral zeal. — As far as We are concerned, the Apostolic office lays upon Us the duty of protesting loudly once more against all that has been done, is doing, or is attempted in Italy to the harm of religion. Defending and guarding the sacred rights of the Church and of the Pontificate, We openly repel and denounce to the whole Catholic world the outrages which the Church and the Pontificate are continually receiving, especially in Rome, and which hamper Us in the government of the Catholic Church, and add difficulty and indignity to Our condition. We are determined not to omit anything on Our part which can serve to maintain the faith lively and vigorous amidst the Italian people, and to protect it against the assaults of its enemies. We, therefore, make appeal, Venerable Brethren, to your zeal and your great love for souls, in order that, possessed with a sense of the gravity of the danger which they incur, you may apply the proper remedies and do all you can to dispel this danger.

8. No means must be neglected that are in your power. All the resources of speech, every expedient in action, all the immense treasures of help and grace which the Church places in your hands, must be made use of, for the formation of a Clergy learned and full of the spirit of Jesus Christ, for the Christian education of youth, for the extirpation of evil doctrines, for the defense of Catholic truths, and for the maintenance of the Christian character and spirit of family life.

9. As to the Catholic people, before everything else it is necessary that they should be instructed as to the true state of things in Italy with regard to religion, the essentially religious character of the conflict in Italy against the Pontiff, and the real object constantly aimed at, so that they may see by the evidence of facts the many ways in which their religion is conspired against, and may be convinced of the risk they run of being robbed and spoiled of the inestimable treasure of the faith. — With this conviction in their minds, and having at the same time a certainty that without faith it is impossible to please God and to be saved, they will understand that what is now at stake is the greatest, not to say the only interest, which every one on earth is bound before all things, at the cost of any sacrifice, to put out of danger, under penalty of everlasting misery. They will, moreover, easily understand that, in this time of open and raging conflict, it would be disgraceful for them to desert the field and hide themselves. Their duty is to remain at their post, and openly to show themselves to be true Catholics by their belief and by actions in conformity with their faith. This they must do for the honor of their faith, and the glory of the Sovereign Leader whose banner they follow; and that they may escape that great misfortune of being disowned at the last day, and of not being recognized as His by the Supreme Judge who has declared that whosoever is not with Him is against Him. — Without ostentation or timidity, let them give proof of that true courage which arises from the consciousness of fulfilling a sacred duty before God and men. To this frank profession of faith Catholics must unite a perfect docility and filial love towards the Church, a sincere respect for their Bishops, and an absolute devotion and obedience to the Roman Pontiff. In a word, they will recognize how necessary it is to cease from everything that is the work of the sects, or that receives impulse or favor from them, as being undoubtedly infected by the anti-Christian spirit; and they will, on the contrary, devote themselves with activity, courage and constancy, to Catholic works, and to the associations and institutions which the Church has blessed, and which the Bishops and the Roman Pontiff encourage and sustain.-Moreover, seeing that the chief instrument employed by our enemies is the press, which in great part receives from them its inspiration and support, it is important that Catholics should oppose the evil press by a press that is good, for the defense of truth, out of love for religion, and to uphold the rights of the Church. While the Catholic press is occupied in laying bare the perfidious designs of the sects, in helping and seconding the action of the sacred Pastors, and in defending and promoting Catholic works, it is the duty of the faithful efficaciously to support this press,-both by refusing or ceasing to favor in any way the evil press; and also directly, by concurring, as far as each one can, in helping it to live and thrive: and in this matter We think that hitherto enough has not been done in Italy.-Lastly, the teaching addressed by Us to all Catholics, especially in the Encyclicals “Humanum genus” and “Sapientiae Christianae,” should be particularly applied to the Catholics of Italy, and be impressed upon them. If they have anything to suffer or to sacrifice through remaining faithful to these duties, let them take courage in the thought that the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and is gained only by doing violence to ourselves; and that he who loves himself and what is his own more than Jesus Christ, is not worthy of Him. The example of the many invincible champions who, throughout all time, have generously sacrificed everything for the faith, and the special helps of grace which make the yoke of Jesus Christ sweet and His burden light, ought to animate powerfully their courage and to sustain them in the glorious contest. (Pope Leo XIII, Dall’Alto Dell’Apostolico Seggio, October 15, 1890.)

Appendix C

Pope Leo XIII’s Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892

Guardians of that faith to which the Christian nations owe their morality and civil redemption, We must dutifully discharge each one of Our supreme tasks. Therefore We must raise Our voice in loud protestations against the impious war which tries to take such a precious treasure away from you, beloved children. Already taught by long and sorrowful experience, you know well the terrible trials of this war, you who deplore it in your hearts as Catholics and as Italians. Can one be Italian in name and sentiment and not resent these continual offenses against divine beliefs? These beliefs are the most beautiful of our glories, for they gave to Italy its primacy over the other nations and to Rome the spiritual scepter of the world. They likewise made the wonderful edifice of Christian civilization rise over the ruins of paganism and barbarism.

Can we be Catholic in mind and heart and gaze with dry eyes on that land where our wondrous Redeemer deigned to establish the seat of His kingdom? Now We see His teachings attacked and His reverence outraged, His Church embattled and His Vicar opposed. So many souls redeemed by His blood are now lost, the choicest portion of His flock, a people faithful to Him for nineteen centuries. How can We bear to look upon His chosen people exposed to a constant and ever-present danger of apostasy, pushed toward error and vice, material miseries, and moral degradation?

2. This war is directed at the same time against the heavenly and the earthly kingdoms, against the faith of our ancestors and the culture which they handed on to us. It is thus doubly evil, being guilty of a divine offense no less than a human one. Is its chief source not that very masonic sect which We discussed at length in the encyclical “Humanum genus” of April 20, 1884, and in the more recent one of October 15, 1890, addressed to the bishops, the clergy and the Italian people? With these two letters We tore from the face of masonry the mask which it used to hide itself and We showed it in its crude deformity and dark fatal activity.

3. We shall restrict Ourselves now to its deplorable effects on Italy. For a long time now it has bored its way under the deceitful guise of a philanthropic society and redeemer of the Italian people. By way of conspiracies, corruptions, and violences, it has finally come to dominate Italy and even Rome. To what troubles, to what calamities has it opened the way in a little more than thirty years?

4. Our country has seen and suffered great evils in such a short span of time, for the faith of our fathers has been made a sign for persecutions of every sort. The satanic intent of the persecutors has been to substitute naturalism for Christianity, the worship of reason for the worship of faith, so-called independent morality for Catholic morality, and material progress for spiritual progress. To the holy maxims and laws of the Gospel, they have imposed laws and maxims which can be called the code of revolution. They have also imposed an atheistic doctrine and a vile realism to school, science, and the Christian arts. Having invaded the temple of the Lord, they have squandered the booty of the Church’s goods, the greatest part of the inheritance necessary for the ministers, and reduced the number of priests by the conscription of clerics beyond the limits of extreme need. If the administration of the sacraments could not be impeded, they sought nonetheless to introduce and promote civil marriages and funerals. If they have not yet succeeded in seizing control of education and the direction of charitable institutions, they always aim with perseverance to laicize everything, which is to remove the mark of Christianity from it. If they could not silence the voice of the Catholic press, they made every effort to discredit and revile it.

5. In this battle against the Catholic religion, what partiality and contradictions there are! They closed monasteries and convents, but they let multiply at will masonic lodges and sectarian dens. They proclaimed the right of association, while the legal rights which all kinds of organizations use and abuse are denied to religious societies. They proclaim freedom of religion and reserve odious intolerance and vexations precisely for the religion of the Italians — which, for that reason, should be assured respect and a special protection. They made protests and great promises for the protection of the dignity and independence of the pope, but you see their daily contempt of Our person. All kinds of public shows find an open field; yet this or that Catholic demonstration is either prohibited or disturbed. They encourage schisms, apostasies, and revolts against legitimate superiors in the Church. Religious vows and especially religious obedience are rebuked as contrary to human dignity and freedom, while impious associations which bind their followers by wicked oaths and demand blind, absolute obedience in crime are allowed to flourish with impunity.

6. We do not wish to exaggerate the masonic power by attributing to its direct and immediate action all the evils which presently preoccupy Us. However, you can clearly see its spirit in the facts which We have just recorded and in many others which We could recall. That spirit, which is the implacable enemy of Christ and of the Church, tries all ways, uses all arts, and prevails upon all means. It seizes from the Church its first-born daughter and seizes from Christ His favored nation, the seat of His Vicar on earth and the center of Catholic unity. To see the evil and efficacious influence of this spirit on our affairs, We have more than a few fleeting indications and the series of facts which have succeeded themselves for thirty years. Proud of its successes, the sect herself has spoken out and told us all its past accomplishments and future goals. It regards the public powers as its instruments, witting or not, which is to say that the impious sect boasts as one of its principal works the religious persecution which has troubled and is troubling our Italy. Though often executed by other hands, this persecution is inspired and promoted by masonry, in an immediate or mediate, direct or indirect manner, by flattery or threats, seduction or revolution.

7. The road is very short from religious to social ruin. The heart of man is no longer raised to heavenly hopes and loves; capable and needing the infinite, it throws itself insatiably on the goods of this earth. Inevitably there is a perpetual struggle of avid passions to enjoy, become rich, and rise. Then we encounter a large and inexhaustible source of grudges, discords, corruptions, and crimes. In our Italy there was no lack of moral and social disorders before the present events — but what a sorrowful spectacle we see in our days! That loving respect which forms domestic harmony is substantially diminished; paternal authority is too often unrecognized by children and parents alike. Disagreements are frequent, divorce common. Civil discords and resentful anger between the various orders increase every day in the cities. New generations which grew up in a spirit of misunderstood freedom are unleashed in the cities, generations which do not respect anything from above or below. The cities teem with incitements to vice, precocious crimes, and public scandals. The state should be content with the high and noble office of recognizing, protecting, and helping divine and human rights in their harmonious universality. Now, however, the state believes itself almost a judge and disowns these rights or restricts them at will. Finally, the general social order is undermined at its foundations. Books and journals, schools and universities, clubs and theaters, monuments and political discourse, photographs and the fine arts, everything conspires to pervert minds and corrupt hearts. Meanwhile the oppressed and suffering people tremble and the anarchic sects arouse themselves. The working classes raise their heads and go to swell the ranks of socialism, communism, and anarchy. Characters exhaust themselves and many souls, no longer knowing how to suffer nobly nor how to redeem themselves manfully, take their lives with cowardly suicide.

8. Such are the fruits which the masonic sect has borne to us Italians. And after that it yearns to come before you, extolling its merits towards Italy. It likewise yearns to give Us and all those who, heeding Our words, remain faithful to Jesus Christ, the calumnious title of enemies of the state. The facts reveal the merits of this guilty sect toward our peninsula, “merits” which bear repeating. The facts say that masonic patriotism is no less than sectarian egotism which yearns to dominate everything, particularly the modern states which unite and concentrate everything in their hands. The facts say that in the plans of masonry, the names of political independence, equality, civilization, and progress aimed to facilitate the independence of man from God in our country. From them, license of error and vice and union of faction at the expense of other citizens have grown. The easy and delicious enjoyment of life by the world’s fortunate is nurtured in the same source. A people redeemed by divine blood have thus returned to divisions, corruptions, and the shames of paganism.

9. That does not surprise Us. — After nineteen centuries of Christian civilization, this sect tries to overthrow the Catholic Church and to cut off its divine sources. It absolutely denies the supernatural, repudiating every revelation and all the means of salvation which revelation shows us. Through its plans and works, it bases itself solely and entirely on such a weak and corrupt nature as ours. Such a sect cannot be anything other than the height of pride, greed, and sensuality. Now, pride oppresses, greed plunders, and sensuality corrupts. When these three concupiscences are brought to the extreme, the oppressions, greed, and seductive corruptions spread slowly. They take on boundless dimensions and become the oppression, plundering and source of corruption of an entire people.

10. Let Us then show you masonry as an enemy of God, Church, and country. Recognize it as such once and for all, and with all the weapons which reason, conscience, and faith put in your hands, defend yourselves from such a proud foe. Let no one be taken in by its attractive appearance or allured by its promises; do not be seduced by its enticements or frightened by its threats. Remember that Christianity and masonry are essentially irreconcilable, such that to join one is to divorce the other. You can no longer ignore such incompatibility between Catholic and mason, beloved children: you have been warned openly by Our predecessors, and We have loudly repeated the warning.

11. Those who, by some supreme misfortune, have given their name to one of these societies of perdition should know that they are strictly bound to separate themselves from it. Otherwise they must remain separated from Christian communion and lose their soul now and for eternity. Parents, teachers, godparents, and whoever has care of others should also know that a rigorous duty binds them to keep their wards from this guilty sect or to draw them from it if they have already entered.

12. In a matter of such importance and where the seduction is so easy in these times, it is urgent that the Christian watch himself from the beginning. He should fear the least danger, avoid every occasion, and take the greatest precautions. Use all the prudence of the serpent, while keeping in your heart the simplicity of the dove, according to the evangelical counsel. Fathers and mothers should be wary of inviting strangers into their homes or admitting them to domestic intimacy, at least insofar as their faith is not sufficiently known. They should try to first ascertain that an astute recruiter of the sect does not hide himself in the guise of a friend, teacher, doctor or other benefactor. Oh, in how many families has the wolf penetrated in sheep’s clothing!

13. It is beautiful to see the varied groups which arise everywhere today in every order of social life: worker groups, groups of mutual aid and social security, organizations to promote science, arts, letters, and other similar things. When they are inspired by a good moral and religious spirit, these groups certainly prove to be useful and proper. But because the masonic poison has penetrated and continues to penetrate here also, especially here, any groups that remove themselves from religious influence should be generally suspect. They can easily be directed and more or less dominated by masons, becoming the sowingground and the apprenticeship of the sect in addition to providing assistance to it.

14. Women should not join philanthropic societies whose nature and purpose are not well-known without first seeking advice from wise and experienced people. That talkative philanthropy which is opposed to Christian charity with such pomp is often the passport for masonic business.

15. Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.

16. Every Christian should shun books and journals which distill the poison of impiety and which stir up the fire of unrestrained desires or sensual passions. Groups and reading clubs where the masonic spirit stalks its prey should be likewise shunned.

17. In addition, since we are dealing with a sect which has pervaded everything, it is not enough to remain on the defensive. We must courageously go out into the battlefield and confront it. That is what you will do, beloved children, opposing press to press, school to school, organization to organization, congress to congress, action to action.

18. Masonry has taken control of the public schools, leaving private schools, paternal schools, and those directed by zealous ecclesiastics and religious of both sexes to compete in the education of Christian youth. Christian parents especially should not entrust the education of their children to uncertain schools. Masonry has confiscated the inheritance of public charity; fill the void, then, with the treasure of private relief. It has placed pious works in the hands of its followers, so you should entrust those that depend on you to Catholic institutions. It opens and maintains houses of vice, leaving you to do what is possible to open and maintain shelters for honesty in danger. An anti-Christian press in religious and secular matters militates at its expense, so that your effort and money are required by the Catholic press. Masonry establishes societies of mutual help and credit unions for its partisans; you should do the same not only for your brothers but for all the indigent. This will show that true and sincere charity is the daughter of the One who makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the just man and sinner alike.

19. May this struggle between good and evil extend to everything, and may good prevail. Masonry holds frequent meetings to plan new ways to combat the Church, and you should hold them frequently to better agree on the means and order of defense. It multiplies its lodges, so that you should multiply Catholic clubs and parochial groups, promote charitable associations and prayer organizations, and maintain and increase the splendor of the temple of God. The sect, having nothing to fear, today shows its face to the light of day. You Italian Catholics should also make open profession of your faith and follow the example of your glorious ancestors who confessed their faith bravely before tyrants, torture, and death. What more? Does the sect try to enslave the Church and to put it at the feet of the state as a humble servant? You must then demand and claim for it the freedom and independence due it before the law. Does masonry seek to tear apart Catholic unity, sowing discord even in the clergy itself, arousing quarrels, fomenting strife, and inciting insubordination, revolt, and schism? By tightening the sacred bond of charity and obedience, you can thwart its plans, bring to naught its efforts, and disappoint its hopes. Be all of one heart and one mind, like the first Christians. Gathered around the See of Peter and united to your pastors, protect the supreme interests of Church and papacy, which are just as much the supreme interests of Italy and of all the Christian world. The Apostolic See has always been the inspirer and jealous guardian of Italian glory. Therefore, be Italians and Catholics, free and non-sectarian, faithful to the nation as well as to Christ and His visible Vicar. An anti-Christian and antipapal Italy would truly be opposed to the divine plan, and thus condemned to perish. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)