Nations Need Kings According to the Mind of Christ the King, November 9, 2025

The anti-Incarnational world of Modernity has such a hold upon the minds of most Americans, including most believing Catholics who accept the fact that the See of Saint Peter has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, that it is almost impossible, humanly speaking, for most of them to break away from the constant agitation and distractions that leave little time for the study of the Faith and of the authentic history of how thoroughly men and their nations conformed themselves to It during the era of Christendom.

Indeed, most Catholics, no matter where they fall along the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide at this time of apostasy and betrayal, cannot even conceive of any kind of governmental situation that vests ultimate authority in a sovereign ruler who exercises his governing authority in the Holy Name of Christ the King to advance the temporal good of their kingdoms in light of man’s Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven, and of being willing at all times to submit to the directions or exhortations of a true pope and/or the episcopal primate of his kingdom when the good of souls demands their invention as a last resort in the exercise of Holy Mother Church’s Indirect Power over matters that appertain to the realm of Caesar.

Although there were certainly more than a handful of potentates who ruled during Christendom did not fulfill their duties to rule according to the mind of Christ the King as He has discharged It exclusively in His true Church, the Catholic Church, many others did so heroically as they took seriously their Coronation Oath that was administered to them by the metropolitan of their kingdom and is included in the 1896 edition of the Pontificale Romanum. It is instructive to review the some of the more important parts of the Rite of Coronation in order to see how far we are from having any concept of the only legitimate purpose of civil rule and important it is for us to be pray for the restoration of the ultimate monarch on the face of the earth, a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter, and of his assistants in the temporal ream as viceroys of Christ the King who give public honor as well to Our Lady, she who is Our Immaculate Queen.

Each section of the coronation ceremony will be presented below, followed by a brief commentary, staring with the oath that the king takes. The instructions in the ritual are in bold type:

The oath

The King-elect walks up to the Metropolitan and, genuflecting before him and with his head bare, makes the following profession, saying:

I, N., with God's consent the future King N., profess and promise in the presence of God and his Angels to bring about and maintain law, justice and peace, as far as I am able to do so, in the Church of God and in the nation subject to me, having a fitting respect for the mercy of God, as best I can devise in accordance with the counsel of my faithful subjects.  I will also give due and canonical honour to the Bishops of the Churches of God and preserve inviolate those things which have been conferred upon and rendered to the Churches by Emperors and Kings.  I will give fitting honour to my Abbots, Counts and Vassals in accordance with the counsel of my faithful subjects.

....After this, the King-elect reverently kisses the hand of the Metropolitan. (Pontificale Romanum, Rite of Coronation.)

Commentary:

A fit ruler is required to recognize he has been chosen by God to rule over the subjects of kingdom according to His teaching, which is the only foundation of authentic law, justice, and peace. This solemn, public recognition of a due submission to the law of God and His ineffable mercy, as well as to due and canonical honor due to Bishops of the Church of God, the  stands in stark contrast to the obeisance of a constitution that makes no reference to Christ the King, His true Church, and the good of soul to which an American president must make upon his inauguration:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. (Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 8.)

Notice the difference: the Coronation Rite of Kings and the oath administered to a president of the United States of America at the beginning of his term on January 20 following the counting of the unsealing of the state-certified electoral college votes by the President of the Senate in the presence of both Houses of the Congress of the United States of America. A Catholic king must render his obligation to pursue justice, law, and peace that are found only in the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and to be submissive to Holy Mother Church in doing so.

As has been noted so many hundreds of times before on this website, the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America, many of whom hated and blasphemed Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His true Church, made the text of their document’s own words as the only basis for law, justice, and peace, therefore establishing a never-ending struggle between those who “revere” the original intent of those words and those who believe that, as there is nothing external to those words to constrain them, they are free to interpret those words in any many they choose. This is identical to the consequences of Martin Luther’s revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man’s return to Him through the Catholic Church as he rendered unto each “believer” the ability to interpret Sacred Scripture according to their own fallen lights, thus making Holy Writ the plaything of all “believers” to such an extent as to render the words of even the corrupted and edited Protestant bibles absolutely meaningless and easily adaptable to whatever sinful abomination demands some kind of “scriptural” assent.

The second part of the coronation ceremony as prescribed in the Pontificale Romanum is the conferral of the sword given a king by the metropolitan archbishop with which to defend Holy Mother Church and to fight against the “mass of iniquity” that so many fully traditional Catholics today mistake as the “lesser of two evils” without realizing that naturalism is evil in and of itself and can only produce and thereby institutionalize even more evils with which they were dismiss because of the omnipresence boogeyman of the “greater evil,” an attitude that eventually results of the triumph of evils of all kind, including blasphemy, as long a the illusion of “liberty” without the standard of the Holy Cross, which is the only true standard of human liberty, can be maintained as licentiousness prevails in every aspect of personal and social life:

The conferral of the regalia

When the gradual has been sung, the Metropolitan sits before the altar at the faldstool wearing his mitre.  The King is led... to the Metropolitan.  He makes obesiance to him, as before, and genuflects before him.  The Metropolitan then takes a sword... and hands it, unsheathed, to the King, saying:

Take the sword lifted from the altar by our hands - unworthy, yet consecrated by the authority of the holy Apostles - which is granted to you in virtue of your kingship and ordained by God in virtue of our bless + ing for the defence of the holy Church of God.  And remember that which the Psalmist prophesied, saying: "Gird your thigh with your sword, mighty one"; so that you might wield it with the same force of justice, destroy with power the mass of iniquity, and fight for and protect the holy Church of God and her faithful people; and that you might faithfully cut off and rout both false men and enemies of the Christian name; that you might mercifully help and defend widows and orphans; restore that which is desolate and, having restored it, preserve it; avenge injustice; and confirm that which is well disposed.  In so doing, as a outstanding devotee of justice, made glorious by the triumph of virtue, may you be worthy to reign without end with the Saviour of the world.... (Pontificale Romanum, Rite of Coronation.)

Commentary

Holy Mother Church required the kings of Christendom to cut off the “mass of iniquity,” not to seek a “consensus” with it. Kings were required to use the sword of the Holy Faith and to “destroy with power the mass of iniquity,” not be content to “live with it.” Absent the Holy Faith, though, men must descend to the depths of depravity, including the advance of every manner of wickedness that, I dare say, might even have put the residents of Sodom and Gomorrha to shame.

There is no reason to be “shocked” as depravity must increase as the life of Sanctifying Grace in the souls of men decrease. Men need a visible king to take the place and the enforce the Sovereignty of Christ the King over them and nations. It’s not Trump or the abyss, my friends. It’s Christ the King or the abyss into which we have already descended.

The ceremony for the bestowal of the sword by a metropolitan archbishop upon a Catholic king emphasizes the king’s duty to “faithfully cut off and rout both false men and enemies of the Christian name.”

There is no such concept of this today even the minds of most Catholics as they have lived their own lives in a cacophony of error that has always been given equal claim to the truth in the so-called American “marketplace of ideas, a falsehood that was eviscerated by Pope Pius XI in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864:

But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."

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

Why do we waste our time on the “injurious babbling” of naturalism?

How is it possible not to see that the members of the false opposites of the organized crime families of the naturalist “left” and of the naturalist “right” believe that material well-being is the ultimate raison d’etre of civil government, differing only as to whether the “free market” or the coercive redistribution of wealth mandated by the confiscatory taxing and regulatory powers of the civil state are the best way to do so?

How is it possible not to understand that nations that are reduced to the secular or naturalistic lowest common denominator must be doomed to the fate described by Pope Pius Leo XIII in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900?

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.)

This is what Holy Mother Church required of her kings and emperors during the era of Christendom. There is utterly no concept of this in the minds of anyone in public life today, and anyone means anyone. No one understands any this. Sadder still, the number of Catholics who understand this is negligeable, which itself is the product of the influence of the Americanist ethos of seeing the world through the lens of naturalism rather than through the eyes of the Holy Faith and of the influence of Modernism’s “official reconciliation” with the anti-Incarnational principles that gave birth to Americanism.

Whether or not they realize it, most Catholics today have fallen prey to the Pelagian heresy in that they think that they can hold back the tide of evil and/or advance the cause of justice in the world absent a due social reverence for Christ the King and His true Church. Public life is quite indeed stained with crime as a result.

Men prefer to wallow in their pleasures and to accumulate wealth and “toys” as they waste their time on vain amusements. They are as immune to the warning signs of a decaying society today as were the men at the time of the Flood and destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha. Modernity rejected Catholicism and the Social Reign of Christ the King and replaced with the oligarchy of self-anointed “high priests” and “priestesses” who have always been intent on imposing their own “orthodoxy,” whatever it may happen to be at a particular time, in increasingly more totalitarian ways while the masses are distracted with their bread and circuses.

Father Henry James Coleridge explained that those who ignore God’s warnings, including those given by His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, bring themselves and their nations to destruction:

With regard to the antediluvian world, there is this feature besides, that God undoubtedly warned the race of mankind that His judgments were about to come on them. It appears from the Scripture account that the ark took a hundred years to build, and that during that time Noe was a preacher of repentance. We know but little indeed of those marvellous days, when human life, as the Scripture tells us, was so long, but if that were so, it would be quite enough to account for the forgetfulness of the things of God and of the soul, and for the extreme profligacy of which we also read of the anteldiluvian. Alas! So it is. If life in our days could be prolonged for twice or thrice its ordinary span, it would more probably be for the greater misery that for the greater happiness of mankind. And when we are told, as we are times told in Scriptures, that God has shortened the days of the ordinary human lifetime, it is certain that He has done so in pity rather than in anger. Then also, the antediluvians seem to have dwelt in the very fairest region of the earth, they seem to have been more full of natural knowledge and of acquired skill in the use of the resources of enjoyment and physical wellbeing that those who came after them, and it is very likely indeed that their numbers were not such as to cause that struggle for existence which is now the lot of the populations of so many countries of the world, in which the great enjoyment of the good things of the earth is not yet the free inheritance of the many. At all events, they were so fearfully and outrageously corrupt, morally and socially, that the sacred writer tells us that their wickedness was so great, that it made God repent in His heart that He had created them. Such was the population of the earth, or of those parts of it then inhabited by man, on whom the great destruction of the Flood came like a thief in the night.

As to the other period and generation of which our Lord speaks, and to which, in its heedlessness and unwatchfulness, He compares the men of the last days, why need I speak? Sodom and Gomorrha, the Cities of the Plain – the very name is synonymous with everything that is most foul and licentious, even to the degradation of our human nature. The land in which they dwelt was one of unexampled beauty and fertility. We are told in the book of Genesis, that “the country about Jordan was watered throughout before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, as the paradise of the Lord, and like Egypt as when one comes to Segur.” (Gen. Xiii. 10)  And as the Flood had been brought on by list, so also was it with the destruction of these fair cities and their wicked inhabitants. Here, then, we find also these two features, immense material enjoyment and the most intense moral degradation. We are not told that the people of these cities were directly warned of the chastisement which they were bringing on themselves, but, at all events, they had had for some time resident among them a chosen servant of God Lot, the sister's son of Abraham, of whom St. Peter speaks as if he had been a witness to virtue and morality, “oppressed by the injustice and lewd conversation of the wicked, for in sight and hearing he was just, dwelling among them, who day by day vexed the just soul with ungodly works.” (2 St. Peter ii 7, 8.)  So that if they had not a direct warning, they had the witness of a holy life among them to reproach them for their profound foulness of lust. And we may daily suppose that if they were not warned by any more direct signs or predictions of their coming destruction, it was because they were so deeply engrossed in their sensuality as not to be capable of conversation, or of arousing, by any such means, as it is indeed the characteristic of men who are given to those enormous sins of lust, to be incapable of compunction, and beyond the reach of the most startling warnings of Providence.   (Father Henry James Coleridge, S.J.. Discourses on the Latter Days, 1883, pp. 77-91. Published by St. Pius X Press.)

We have arrived at the days of the sort that Father Coleridge did not believe existed in his time. Indeed, we have exceeded the lusts of the pagan Romans and the statism of its ceasars, and we are making Sodom and Gomorrha look like the Victorian England in which Father Coleridge lived all but the first fifteen years of his life.

The virtue of Catholic kings and the requirement that Holy Mother Church made of them to root out “the mass of iniquity” and to “faithfully cut off and rout both false men and enemies of the Christian name has no home in the hearts of the Catholic faithful nor in the civil leaders in whom their place all their hopes as they ignore the increasingly higher and higher levels of evil that become more “tolerable” and about which silence must be maintained out of the fear of those whose support for evil is undisguised and unapologetically bold. Timidity in the face of evil only leads to the triumph of more evil, and the triumph of more evil over time, no matter whether at a slower or more rapid place, is the only thing than can occur in a naturalistic system steeped in foundational errors and that makes no place for Christ the King and His true Church.

Pope Leo XIII explained in Sapientianae Christianae, January 10, 1890, that timidity can have no place in the lives of Catholics:

But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

Anyone who thinks that there is a shortcut to ward off or to mitigate the chastisements of the present time is not thinking clearly, which is why a lot of well-meaning Catholics go temporarily insane every four years as they lose their mind to the agitation of the moment without thinking that the very moral evils they are attempting to ward off or mitigate by naturalistic means would never be endorsed by a Catholic king who prayed to Our Lady to be faithful to his coronation oath. Mankind has rejected the concept of an exterior authority in the person of a king who knows himself to be a viceroy of Christ the King and who understands that his own Particular Judgment depends precisely upon his fidelity to his coronation oath.

The next part of the bestowal of the sword upon a Catholic king emphasizes the duty to defend and propagate the Holy Faith by both example and deed, and to do so in a manly manner:

When this has been done, the sword is replaced in its scabbard by the ministers and the Metropolitan girds the King with the sword, saying:

Gird your thigh with your sword, mighty one, and take note that the righteous conquer their kingdoms not with the sword but by faith.

The King, having received the sword, presently rises, draws it from its scabbard and brandishes it in a manly fashion.  He then wipes it on his right arm and replaces it in the scabbard, and he genuflects again before the Metropolitan.  Then the crown is placed on his head.... (Pontificale Romanum, Rite of Coronation.)

Commentary:

There is no room for effeminacy in the life of a ruler. There is NO ROOM for effeminacy in the life of a priest. There is no room for effeminacy in the life of a bishop. Catholic men must be men, which means they must lead after the example of Christ the King, Who was, as Pope Saint Pius X noted in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, merciful but also just:

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910).

“Humanitarianism” means nothing.

Catholicism means everything.

Holiness is the prerequisite for just rulers just as it is the prerequisite for us to save our souls, which is why the ceremony of bestowing the crown upon the heads of kings emphasizes its essential nature:

Receive the crown of the king, which is placed on your head by our hands - unworthy hands, but yet the hands of Bishops.  In the name of the Fa + ther, and of the S + on, and of the Holy + Spirit.  May you understand it to signify the glory of holiness, honour and the work of bravery, and may you know that through it you are a participant in our ministry, so that, as we are understood to be pastors in interior matters and the guiders of souls, so you in external matters may assist us as a worshipper of God and a strenuous defender of the Church of Christ against all adversity; and that you may always serve as a useful governor and a profitable ruler of the realm that has been given to you by God and committed to your rule through the office of the blessings of us who act in the place of the Apostles and all the Saints; so that, adorned with the jewels of  virtue among the glorious heroes, and crowned with the prize of eternal happiness, you may glory for ever with our Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ, whose name and authority we believe you bear.... (Pontificale Romanum, Rite of Coronation.)

Writing in his last encyclical letter, Mirae Caritas, May 28, 1902, Pope Leo XIII explained how adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament is an essential component in the lives of rulers and other leaders of civil society, explaining also how Sanctifying Grace quickens the mind and strengthens the will:

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. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.) 

Pope Leo XIII went on to explain that the results of an abandonment of the worthy reception of the Blessed Sacrament and of time spent before It in fervent prayer are tragic for societies, which can be set aright only by the Catholic Faith. There is never any short-cut to the betterment of men and/or the world in which they live at any given point in time. It is the Faith and only the Faith that can help souls to know, to love and to serve God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church, which alone is the repository and infallible explicator all that He has revealed in the Deposit of Faith. To Pope Leo in Mirae Caritatis:

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 Caritas, May 28, 1902.)

Yes, the keenness of the mind is blunted by the sort of bodily pleasures that Donald John Trump and almost everyone else in the farce of naturalism that continues to unfold before us, including his fiercest opponents in the Democratic Party, have partaken throughout the course of their adult lives. Such men can never come to act in a truly wise manner as they respond to the provocations of the moment and are without any thought about horror of, no less possessing any remorse for, their own personal sins. Men who live in such a way will always be lost in a sea of confusion that will never lift from their minds until they embrace the true Faith and make a good, intergral Confession of their sins to a true priest. It is after such a conversion that one can come to grow spiritually as an adorer of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His Real Presence before the Blessed Sacrament. Those who spend such time with Christ the King receive infused graces into their souls.

No matter the differences between "conservatives" and "liberals," my friends, they both have one mind and one heart in the belief that man does not need the teaching and sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church to guide them in their private and social lives. This is, of course, the triumph of the Judeo-Masonic spirit of naturalism that was dissected so well by Pope Leo XIII. It matters little as to who is or is not a formally enrolled member of the "lodges" when most Catholics and non-Catholics alike are infected with the ethos of naturalism.

Contrast the easy embrace of sins, up to and including blasphemy and profanity, that characterize social life in the United States of America with the ceremony of a king receiving his scepter from the hand of his metropolitan archbishop:

Then, as he continues to genuflect, the Metropolitan gives him the sceptre, saying:

Receive the staff of virtue and truth, and know that with it you shall reward the pious, terrify the wicked, show the way to those who err, stretch out our arm to those who have fallen, scatter the proud and make revelation to the humble; and may Jesus Christ our Lord open his door to you, he who says of himself: "I am the door: whoever enters through me will be saved"; he who is the key of David and the sceptre of the house of Israel; that which he opens no-one may close, and that which he closes no-one may open.  May he be a guide to you, he who leads the captive out of the prison house and guides him who sits in the darkness and the shadow of death; and may you be worthy in all things to follow him of whom the prophet David sang: "Your seat, O God, is eternal: the rod of governance, the rod of your rule".  Imitating him, may you love justice and have a hatred for iniquity, because it is for this reason that God has anointed you - your God, who has anointed you to be an exemplar of him whom he anointed before all his ministers before the beginning of time with the oil of exultation, Jesus Christ our Lord....

I don’t know about you, noting that there may not be too many readers who get to this point in this commentary. However, how can a Catholic’s heart not be filled with amazement at the way in which our wise mater and magister, Holy Mother Church, required a king to defend “virtue and truth,” “reward the pious, terrify the wicked, show the way to those who err, stretch out their arms to those who have fallen, and scatter the proud and make revelation to the humble?

The ceremony of bestowing the scepter includes yet another reminder to the king to “love justice, and have a hatred for iniquity,” explaining that “it is for this reason that God has anointed you—your God, who has anointed you to be an exemplar of him who he anointed before all his ministers before the beginning of time with the oil of exultation, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Those in civil rule must exercise their authority for the cause of Christ the King and His true Church, a cause that is synonymous with the common temporal good of society, something that Silvio Cardinal Antoniano explained over five hundred forty years ago:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, as quoted by Pope Pius XI inDivini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Do you have any better ideas?

God the Holy Ghost saw fit to instruct us in Sacred Scripture, including in the passage from the Book of Proverbs:

[34] Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable. (Proverbs 14: 34.)

Christ the King will not be mocked. He will suffer the sins of men so that they and their nations might be brought to repentance. He is not, however, indifferent to that which caused Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross, sin, and that wounds the Church Militant on earth and impedes the pursuit of the true common temporal good of men and their nations.

The final part of the coronation rite contained in the 1896 Pontificale Romanum is the enthronement of a king on his throne, which is symbolic of the Throne of Christ the High Priest and King in Heaven for Whom the king must rule and Whom He will be accountable at the Particular Judgment upon his death for his stewardship of the kingdom entrusted to his royal care:

....The Metropolitan leads the King, with the sceptre in his hand and wearing the crown on his head, with the other prelates... to the throne... and enthrones the King on the throne, saying:

Stay, and keep henceforth the place mandated to you by God, by the authority of almighty God, and through the present investiture conducted by us, and by all the Bishops and other servants of God; and, insofar as you see the priesthood as standing closer to the sacred altars, remember that greater honour is due to you in your own domain, as the priesthood, being the mediator between God and men, makes you the enduring mediator between the priesthood and the people. (Pontificale Romanum.)

This concept of royal dignity rooted in a humble submission to the priesthood and to the ineffable Sacrifice of the Holy Mass is foreign to the minds of Catholics who, whether or not they realize it, are steeped in throes of Americanism that ignores these plain words of Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alas, hatred and violence must reign supreme in a world that has rebelled against Its loving, merciful King, Christ the King, Whose Most Sacred Heart beats with burning love in the tabernacles of Catholic churches served by true priests who offer the ineffable Sacrifice of Calvary in an unbloody manner in a valid rite of the Catholic Church. The only remedy to the problems that beset us at the present time, noting that there will always be difficulties even in a world governed by true principles because of the vagaries of fallen human nature, is to seek with urgency the conversion of all men to the One, True Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

We are eyewitnesses to the demise of Lockean liberalism’s contention that men can solve social problems by relinquishing their claim to a “total liberty” that is nothing other then licentiousness by banding together into a “social contract” that a “majority of reasonable individuals” can revoke at any time for any reason, thus introducing the concept of the changeability of governments at the mere whim of the people, who will always want their ears tickled with a cacophony of errors to reaffirm them in their sins.

The Lockean premise was nothing other than a recrudescence of the belief of human self-redemption, that is, that men could solve social problems, each of which is the result of Original Sin and our Actual Sins, of course, by means of their own unaided powers. Locke, who was an idiot, by the way, thus set the stage for perpetual disappointment, anger, violence and class warfare because the belief that governmental policies can “solve” social problems that are the fault of individual men leads to the demands for more and more governmental “solutions” until such time as the myth of modern “freedom” is subsumed under a brutal totalitarianism that is the antithesis of the royal duties of a Catholic monarch.

As has been noted in the past, no, it is just not this former professor who writes these things. I have only attempted to give voice, however poorly, to the simple Catholic truth summarized so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique on August 15, 1910:

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

The reform of societies must start with the reform of individual lives, and for this we need the help of Our Lady’s graces. There can be no true social order when men have cast off the sweet yoke of her Divine Son’s Social Kingship over them and their nations and wallow in the pig stye of their unrepented sins, no less celebrate them with abandon and live just a cut above—and with far less clothing, I should note—than the barbarians of yore.  

Today, Sunday, November 9, 2025, is the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of the Holy Saviour--the Basilica di San Giovanni Laterano, which the cathedral of a true pope as the Bishop of Rome. While Dom Prosper Gueranger's reflection on this feast day is appended below, there is a commemoration made today of the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, whose Gospel reading takes the place as the Last Gospel today:

At that time, the Pharisees went and took counsel how they might trap Jesus in His talk. And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that You are truthful, and that You teach the way of God in truth, and that You care naught for any man; for You do not regard the person of men. Tell us, therefore, what do You think: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? But Jesus, knowing their wickedness, said, Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? Show Me the coin of the tribute. So they offered Him a denarius. Then Jesus said to them, Whose are this image and the inscription? They said to Him, Caesar’s. Then He said to them, Render, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. (Matthew 22: 15-21.)

To render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's means for a citizen to obey all just laws that are in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law and to recognize that the leaders of a civil state do indeed have a wide degree of autonomy in the decisions they make in the pursuit of the common temporal good as long as they keep in bind God's laws and the eternal good of the souls of their citizens. Even in the things of Caesar, however, the things of God appertain. Everything we do must redound to the honor and glory of God and serve the actual interests, both temporal and eternal, of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

A decision to build a roadway, for example, is not received from the hand of God and it thus one within the competency of civil officials to make. Such a decision concerning a roadway must be premised upon principles of justice (is there a real need for a highway, will it do more good than harm, how many people will be displaced) and, once undertaken, be constructed sturdily for the honor and glory of God and be able to withstand the pressure of the weight of the vehicles that will travel upon it over the years without having to be torn up for reconstruction constantly (thus inconveniencing the traveling public and lining the coffers of the contractors who profit from building highways designed to be torn up every few years as the proceeds of government contracts are returned in part to the office holders who gave the contractors the job to build and rebuild the highway to begin with).

Pope Saint Pius X reiterated this principle in Singulari Quadam, September 24, 1912:

These are fundamental principles: No matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end, namely, the Highest Good. All his actions, insofar as they are morally either good or bad (that is to say, whether they agree or disagree with the natural and divine law), are subject to the judgment and judicial office of the Church. (Pope Saint Pius X, Singulari Quadam, September 24, 1912.) 

Sadly, there are some who believe that they remain a member of the Catholic Church while rejecting her divinely appointed right to be recognized as the one and only true religion by the civil state and while adopting "Enlightenment" philosophies that place the "sovereignty of man" and his disordered pride at the summit of all things. Each man needs to submit his conscience in humility and docility at all times to the Deposit of Faith and to recognize that no man can persevere in virtue, no less scale the heights of sanctity, unless he has belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. The civil state will naturally degenerate into the totalitarian monster that it has become in the past few centuries when its citizens are not loyal sons and daughters of the Catholic Church and when it does not recognize that that true Church has the right, exercised judiciously and only after the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, to intervene with its decisions if the good of souls demands it.

Dom Prosper Gueranger, who was a shining Apostle of the Social Reign of Christ the King, explained that the will of God is the origin of government, not the will of mere mortals whose bodies are destined the corruption of the grave one day until the General Resurrection of the dead on the Last Day as the trumpets of angels herald the General Judgment upon the living and the dead:

The will of God—there is the origin, there is the real greatness of all authority amongst men! Of himself, man has no right to command his fellow man. The number, however imposing it may be, makes no difference with this powerlessness of men over my conscience; for whether they be one, or five hundred, I, by nature, am equal to each one among them; and by adding the number of their so-called rights over me, they are only adding to the number of nothingness. But God, wishing that men should live one with the other, has thereby wished that there exist amongst them a power which should rule over the rest; that is, should direct the thousands or millions of different wills to the unity of one social end. God leaves to circumstances, though it is his providence that regulates those circumstances—he leaves to men themselves, at the beginning of any mere human society, a great latitude as to the choice of the form under which is to be exercised both the civil power itself and the mode of its transmission. But once regularly invested with the power, its depositories, its possessors, are responsible to God alone, as far, that is, as the legitimate exercise of their authority goes, because it is from God alone that that power comes to them. It does not come to them from their people, who, not having that power themselves, cannot give it to another. So long as those rulers comply with the compact, or do not turn to the ruin of their people the power they received for its well-being—so long their right to the obedience of their subjects is the right of God himself—whether they exercise their authority in exacting the subsidies needed for government; or in passing laws which, for the general good of the people, restrain the liberty otherwise theirs by natural right; or again, by bidding their soldiers defend their country at the risk of life. In all such cases, it is God himself that commands and insists on being obeyed: in this world, he puts the sword into the hands of representatives that they may punish the disobedient; and in the next, he himself will eternally punish them, unless they have made amends.

How great, then, is not the dignity of human Law! It makes the legislator a representative of God, and at the same time, spares the subject the humiliation of feeling himself debased before a fellow man! But in order that the law oblige, that is, be truly a law, it is evident that it must be, first and foremost, conformable to the commands and the prohibitions of that God whose will alone can give it a sacred character, by making it enter into the domain of man’s conscience. It is for this reason that there cannot be a law against God or his Christ or his Church. When God is not with him who governs, the power he exercises is nothing better than brute force. The sovereign, or the parliament, that pretends to govern a country in opposition to the laws of God has no right to aught but revolt and contempt from every upright man; to give the sacred name of law to tyrannical enactments of that kind is a profanation, unworthy not only of Christian, but of every man who is not a slave. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost.)

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

We must not be agitated by the side shows of naturalism or conciliarism. We must serve as champions of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, making sure to include in our intentions the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter and for the rising up of the great monarch who will do battle with Antichrist himself as he fulfills the duty of a Coronation Rite that has no parallel in democratic republics that have descend into the abyss because they have rejected Our Divine King and continue to choose Barabbas in His place.

We must remember that we have no permanent dwelling here in this mortal vale of tears. We are meant to suffer the chastisements of these times in which it has been within the Providence of God to place us so that we can work out our salvation in fear and in trembling as the consecrated slaves of His Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. We have not been left as orphans in this time of apostasy and betrayal and in this time of the triumph, albeit temporary, of the combined forces of Antichrist in the world as Our Lord Himself has sent His Most Blessed Mother to us to clothe us with the shield of Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and to provide us with the weapon against all the enemies of our own salvation and of truth in the world,  her Most Holy Rosary.

Our Lady has told us in the end her Immaculate Heart will triumph, which should give us great encouragement in these troubling times as her Divine Son, Christ the King, has chosen us, unworthy though we are, to be the imperfect instruments by which we can make a bit of reparation for our sins and those of the whole world and to plant a few seeds for the restorations of all things in Him, Our Divine Redeemer and King.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

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 Balthazar, pray for us.

Saint Theodore, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., on the Dedication of the Basilica of the Divine Saviour

In the fourth century of our era, the cessation of persecution seemed to give the world a foretaste of its future entrance into eternal peace. “Glory to the Almighty! Glory to the Redeemer of our souls!” wrote Eusebius at the opening of the tenth and last book of his History. Himself a witness of the triumph, he describes the admirable spectacle everywhere displayed by the dedication of the new sanctuaries. In city after city the Bishops assembled, and crowds flocked together. From nation to nation, the goodwill of mutual charity, of common faith, and of recollected joy, so harmonized all hearts that the unity of Christ’s body was clearly manifested in these multitudes animated by the same inspiration of the Holy Ghost. It was the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies: the living city of the living God, where all, whatever their age or sex, praise together the Author of all good things. How solemn were then the rites of the Church! The complete perfection therein displayed by the Pontiffs, the enthusiasm of the psalmody, the inspired readings, the celebration of the ineffable Mysteries, formed a divine pageantry!

Constantine had placed the imperial treasure at the disposal of the Bishops; and he himself stimulated their zeal for what he called in his edicts the work of the churches. Rome, the place of his victory by the Cross, the capital of the now Christian world, was the first to benefit by the prince’s munificence. In a series of dedications to the glory of the holy Apostles and Martyrs, Sylvester, the Pontiff of peace, took possession of the eternal city in the name of the true God.

Today is the birthday of the mother and mistress of churches, called “of our Savior, Aula Dei (God’s palace), the golden Basilica;” it is a new Sinai, whence the apostolic oracles and so many Councils have made known to the world the law of salvation. No wonder this feat is celebrated by the whole world.

Although the Popes for centuries have ceased to dwell in the Lateran Palace, the Basilica still holds the first rank. It is as true now as it was in the time of St. Peter Damian, to say that “as our Savior is the Head of the elect, so the church which bears his name is the head of all churches; those of St. Peter and St. Paul, on its right and left, are the two arms which this sovereign and universal church embraces the whole earth, saving all those who desire salvation, cherishing and protecting them in its maternal bosom.” And St. Peter Damian applied conjointly to our Savior and his Basilica the words of the prophet Zacharias: Behold a Man, the Orient is his name: and under him shall he spring up, and shall build a temple to the Lord. Yea, he shall build a temple to the Lord: and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit, and rule upon his throne: and he shall be a priest upon his throne.

It is still at the Lateran Basilica that the Roman Pontiffs take official possession of their See. There each year, in the name of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, the episcopal functions are performed, viz: the blessing of the Holy Oils on Maundy Thursday, and on Holy Saturday the blessing of the Font, solemn Baptism and Confirmation, and the general Ordination. Could the great poet of the age of triumph, Prudentius, return to life in these our days, he might still say: “The Roman people hasten in eager crowds to the Lateran, whence they return marked with the sacred sign, with the royal chrism. And we are yet to doubt that Rome is consecrated to thee, O Christ!”

Let us now read the liturgical history of this day.

The rites observed by the Roman Church in consecrating churches and altars were instituted by the blessed Pope Sylvester. For although from apostolic times churches were dedicated to God, and called by some oratories, by others churches; and in them the Christian people assembled on the first day of the week, and were wont there to pray, to hear the word of God, and to receive the Holy Eucharist; yet hitherto they were never so solemnly consecrated, nor was an altar erected in them, anointed with chrism, to represent and signify our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our altar, our victim, and our priest.

But when the emperor Constantine had received health of body and soul by the Sacrament of Baptism, he promulgated a law to the whole world, allowing the Christians to build churches; and he encouraged them in this work by his own example as well as by this edict: Thus, in his Lateran palace he dedicated a church to our Savior; and founded the adjoining baptistery in honor of St. John Baptist, on the very spot where he himself had been baptized by St. Sylvester and cleansed from his leprosy. The Pontiff consecrated it on the fifth of the Ides of November; and we celebrate the memory thereof on this same day, whereon for the first time a church was publicly dedicated in Rome, and there appeared before the eyes of the Roman people an image of our Savior depicted on the wall.

Although later on, when consecrating the altar of the Prince of the Apostles, blessed Sylvester decreed that thenceforward all altars should be built of stone; yet the altar of the Lateran Basilica was of wood. This however is not surprising. For, from the time of St. Peter down to Sylvester, persecution prevented the Pontiffs from having any fixed abode; so that they offered the holy Sacrifice either in crypts of cemeteries, or in the houses of the faithful, as necessity compelled them, upon the said wooden altar, which was hollow like a chest. When peace was granted to the Church, Sylvester placed this altar in the first church, the Lateran; and in honor of the Prince of the Apostles, who is said to have offered the holy Sacrifice upon it, and of the other Pontiffs who had used it up to that time, he decreed that no one should celebrate Mass upon it except the Roman Pontiff. This church having been injured and half ruined in consequence of fires, hostile invasions, and earthquakes, was several times repaired by the care of the Popes. After a new restoration, Pope Benedict XIII, a Dominican, solemnly consecrated it, on the twenty-eight day of April in the year 1726, and ordered the commemoration thereof to be celebrated on this present day. The great works undertaken by Pius IX have been happily completed by Leo XIII, to wit: the principal apse, which was threatening to fall through age, has been very much enlarged; the ancient mosaic, already partially restored at different times, has been reconstructed on the old model, and transferred to the new apse, which is handsomely and richly decorated; the roof and woodwork of the transepts have been renewed and ornamented. Moreover a sacristy and a house for the Canons have been added, as well as a portico connecting these buildings with Constantine’s baptistery. The whole work was completed in the year 1884.

So many details might seem superfluous to the profane. But just as the Pope is to all of us our first and our own Pastor, so his church of the Lateran is our own church; whatever concerns it cannot, or at least should not, be a matter of indifference to the faithful. Let us take our inspirations regarding it from the following beautiful formulae, given us by the Roman Pontifical in the dedication ceremony. To no church could they be better applied than to this. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of the Divine Saviour, November 9.)