This is a very brief reflection for this feast of Saint Lawrence the Martyr. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence Martyr, pray for us.

A republished reflection about Saint John Mary Vianney was posted earlier today, Tuesday, August 9, 2023, although I will discuss the little-known fact of the Cure of Ars’s recantation of his initial refusal to accept the apparition and the message of Our Lady of La Salette at some point in the near future, perhaps even in the next original commentary that I will start writing later today.

For the moment, however, I find it necessary to reply to the irrationality and ignorance of those Catholics who believe everything that Donald John Trump or his surrogates contend is so.

In this regard, therefore, this political scientist with an earned doctorate in the field who taught American National Government and Politics at the college/university level for over thirty years is reprising factual information about the process of electing the President and Vice President of the United States of America, including the fact that state legislatures, which are given the constitutional authority to choose the method of electing their states’ presidential electors, have chosen the method of popular elections for the choosing of said electors, and that there is no constitutional or statutory basis for a vice president of the United States of America to send a state’s certified electoral vote back to a state legislature for “reconsideration.” This has never happened. The authorization to do this does not exist in the provisions of either the Constitution or the pertinent Congressional enactments pertaining to presidential elections.

As some people are incapable of making proper distinctions, it is important to note that to state this is not to endorse anything about the Catholic apostate turned “evangelical” Protestant neoconservative war hawk and friend of the natural security state named Michael Richard Pence, who himself was one of Anthony Fauci’s chief enablers and who never met a pharmaceutical product that he did not endorse unqualifiedly, including the killer “vaccines.”

To state that Pence had no authority to reject certified slates of electors is not to endorse Pence in any way other than to state he had no authority to do what then President Donald John Trump wanted done and, had he done so, the action would have been overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court of the United States of America and, not so unimportantly, have been the cause of widespread civil unrest, if not bloodshed, fueled by the same kind of “community organizers” who destroyed government property during what were called the “George Floyd” riots in the summer of 2020 with the full-throated support of the anti-Catholic, rabidly pro-death bigoted ignoramus named Kamala Harris.

The place to have litigated the claims of election fraud was on the floor of the Congress of the United States of America as the electoral votes were counted by the Vice President of the United States of America acting in his capacity as the President of the Senate before a joint meeting of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. Such a litigation was made impossible by what happened on January 6, 2021.

Donald John Trump committed no criminal acts in the two months leading up to January 6, 2021, but he did exercise poor judgment and listened to cartoon figures who were incapable of seeing the prudence in raising the issue of electoral fraud before organizing to defeat such fraud four years later without giving the sort of ammunition that Soviet-style political hacks armed with the power of subpoenas and the ability to convene grand juries are using against him at this time.

Catholicism is the one and only means of human salvation and it is the only true means of providing a just social order, admitting, of course, that the vagaries of fallen human nature are such that there will always be problems, whether great or small, as a result of the Actual Sins of Men. The extent of social problems depends upon the extent to which men attempt, despite their own weaknesses, to cooperate with the graces won for us by Our Lord during His Passion and Death and that are administered unto them by the working of God the Holy Ghost through by means of Sacramental and Actual Graces to reform their lives and to make reparation for their sins. Catholicism is not a panacea. It is, however, the necessary precondition for a just social order, whose maintenance depends upon the free will choices made by individual men and their readiness to submit themselves entirely to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls.

The spirit of the American founding, therefore, is both Protestant and Judeo-Masonic, and it matters not how many of the founders were Freemasons as each was affected by the spirit of Masonry regardless of their membership (or lack thereof) in one of the lodges. This spirit of Judeo-Masonry is cancerous, which is why it is irrelevant for Catholic defenders of the founding principles to seek to exonerate their heroes because not all of them were Freemasons. Pope Leo XIII explained in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, that it is not the membership in Masonic lodges that matters. It is Freemasonry’s all pervasive spirit of religious indifferentism and naturalism that matters, and that spirit of Freemasonry infects many Catholics without their even knowing it, something that has been the case from the very beginning of this nation.

Here is what Pope Leo XIII wrote in Humanum Genus on this point:

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

What We have said, and are about to say, must be understood of the sect of the Freemasons taken generically, and in so far as it comprises the associations kindred to it and confederated with it, but not of the individual members of them. There may be persons amongst these, and not a few who, although not free from the guilt of having entangled themselves in such associations, yet are neither themselves partners in their criminal acts nor aware of the ultimate object which they are endeavoring to attain. In the same way, some of the affiliated societies, perhaps, by no means approve of the extreme conclusions which they would, if consistent, embrace as necessarily following from their common principles, did not their very foulness strike them with horror. Some of these, again, are led by circumstances of times and places either to aim at smaller things than the others usually attempt or than they themselves would wish to attempt. They are not, however, for this reason, to be reckoned as alien to the masonic federation; for the masonic federation is to be judged not so much by the things which it has done, or brought to completion, as by the sum of its pronounced opinions. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)

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

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

Some Americanist Catholics have been so bold over the years as to assert that the Church has no business at all in pronouncing that she has universal principles for the governance of men and their nations that are binding upon the consciences of all men at all times, thus showing themselves to defect from the Faith by refusing to accept these plain words of Pope Pius XII in Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958: 

Assuming false and unjust premises, they are not afraid to take a position which would confine within a narrow scope the supreme teaching authority of the Church, claiming that there are certain questions -- such as those which concern social and economic matters -- in which Catholics may ignore the teachings and the directives of this Apostolic See.

This opinion -- it seems entirely unnecessary to demonstrate its existence -- is utterly false and full of error because, as We declared a few years ago to a special meeting of Our Venerable Brethren in the episcopacy:

"The power of the Church is in no sense limited to so-called 'strictly religious matters'; but the whole matter of the natural law, its institution, interpretation and application, in so far as the moral aspect is concerned, are within its power.

"By God's appointment the observance of the natural law concerns the way by which man must strive toward his supernatural end. The Church shows the way and is the guide and guardian of men with respect to their supernatural end."

This truth had already been wisely explained by Our Predecessor St. Pius X in his Encyclical Letter Singulari quadam of September 24, 1912, in which he made this statement: "All actions of a Christian man so far as they are morally either good or bad -- that is, so far as they agree with or are contrary to the natural and divine law -- fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church." (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958.) 

Pope Pius XII was condemning the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association's (the rump "church" created by the Red Chinese government that was more or less recognized in ade facto manner by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's letter to Chinese Catholics in 2007 that was reiterated in 2009; see Red China: Workshop for the New Ecclesiology) rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church in matters of social and economic matters. His condemnation applies just as much to anyone else, including Americanist Catholics, who reject the Social Reign of Christ the King and the authority of the Catholic Church to enunciate the moral principles that must guide governance and economics. No naturalist philosophy or program takes place of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church that He Himself created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, for its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping.

Thank you.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence the Martyr, pray for us.

Saint Romanus, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney is the patron of diocesan priests, a man who humbly recognized that he was not the brightest pupil, that he was, to use even his own description, slow in his studies. He had great difficulty learning his Latin. Other studies came hard to him as well. He did not give up. Helped by a wonderful mentor, Father Balley, who had worked as a carpenter during the French Revolution so as to hide his identity as a Catholic priest as he offered Mass in various hideaways and without any "communion" with the bishops and priests of the "constitutional church," John Mary Vianney persevered time and time and time again, praying to Saint John Francis Regis for help and guidance.

Yes, he was tempted to quit his studies, believing himself to unworthy of priestly ordination because of his lack of intellectual aptitude. Father Balley told him very pointedly, "You've decided to give in to the devil?"

That knocked some sense into our Saint, and it should knock some sense into any young man today who might have experienced some difficulties and perhaps even gross injustices in their own pursuit of the priesthood.

Never give up. We need priests, especially now in this time of apostasy and betrayal.

Always close to Our Lady, Saint John Mary Vianney was brought to the point of his priestly ordination on August 13, 1815. His superiors judged that his moral qualities had overcome any academic deficiencies that would have held others back from being ordained to the priesthood, and they were vindicated in their judgment by the long and devoted service that he gave to the people of Ars.

Oh yes, sure, he tried to run away from his people on three occasions, wanting to seek the solitude of a monastery. Each time, however, he responded to the pleas of his sheep who loved their shepherd, who spent so much time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and in the confessional to hear the confessions of the thousands of people who flocked from all over the world to the merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus applied to their souls through his priestly ministry, and returned home to Ars.

Saint John Mary Vianney, who knew failure in his studies for the priesthood, was a firm supporter of the "patron of failures," Pauline Jaricot, the foundress of Society of the Propagation of the Faith and the Universal Living Rosary Association, and zealously devoted to the cause of our great wonder worker, Saint Philomena.

Saint John Mary Vianney spent himself tirelessly in behalf of the flock that was entrusted to his pastoral care. We need to invoke his intercession so that our own true bishops and priests will be fortified by his example as they seek to serve faithful Catholics, the scattering and wandering sheep of this time of apostasy and betrayal, unto eternity.Sai

Our of the Rosary for us.

Saint Lawrence the Deacon, pray for us. 

Saint Romanus, pray for us.

As I have noted several times in the past since this website went live online on February 20, 2004, the work on this website is a continuation of an eponymous printed journal that was in print between September of 1996 and February of 2004. It has ever been the case that the commentaries on matters of civil politics and government published in the printed journal and posted on this website in its various formats have been aimed at focusing on root causes and of helping readers to rise above the agitations of the moment in order to see all things through the eyes of the true Faith.

This commentary on the latest indictment brough by “One Set of Rules for All” Jack Smith against former President Donald John Trump is no exception.

We have not been baptized and confirmed to bear witness to any political figure, and this website does not exist to curry favor with anyone who believes that any political figure, including Trump, can “save” a nation whose self-destruction is but the consequence of the false premises of its founding.

Please continue to pray for the repose of the immortal soul of Mrs. Barbara A. Burgess, about whom I wrote at the close of yesterday's introduction to my republished reflection on the Feast of the Transfiguraiton of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Cajetan, pray for us.

Saint Donatus, pray for us.

Today is the great Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on Mount Thabor in the presence of the Apostles Peter, James and John and in the company of Moses and Elias. God the Father repeated the proclamation that He had made as His Co-Equal Son made Flesh in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb was baptized by His cousin, Saint John the Baptist in the Jordan River prior to the assumption of His Public Ministry, "This is My beloved Son, hear yet Him."

Our Lord was transfigured in the glory that He shared with the God the Father and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven in order to show forth His Sacred Divinity to Saints Peter, the first Pope, Saint James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem and the first of the Apostles to be martyred, and Saint James's brother, Saint John, the beloved Apostle and the Apostle of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, to help console them during the events of His Passion and Death. It is our goal to be transfigured in glory for all eternity in Heaven.

The only path to the heavenly Mount Thabor, however, is by climbing atop Mount Calvary every day of our lives, willingly bearing our crosses in reparation for our sins and those of the world as we offer whatever merit we gain for the patient and joyful endurance of these crosses to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Indeed, our climb to Heaven by ascending first to Mount Calvary is signified every day a true bishop or a true priest completes the prayers at the foot of the altar and ascends the three steps (mystically symbolic of the Thee Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity and of the three stages of the interior life) to the altar itself.

If we desire to be transfigured in all glory in Heaven we must, therefore, be willing to be shamed and humiliated by the the ignominy associated with the Holy Cross. The glories of Heaven are worth such temporary shame and humiliation and ignominy, are they not?

May Our Lady, who awaits us in the heavenly Mount Thabor and intercedes for us from there, help us to ascend to Mount Calvary every day in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass so that we can keep her company at the foot of the Cross every day our lives as a a preparation for spending all eternity in the glories of Heaven with her and Saint Joseph and all of the angels and the saints.

Please pray for the soul of Mrs. Barbara Burgess, who was a long-suffering yet joyful champion of the Catholic Faith and a faithful defender of the innocent preborn, Indeed, she convinced many women to save their children from being killed by baby butchers.

Mrs. Burgess loved Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother with a purity and unalloyed devotedness that inspired many others to follow her simple yet profound surrender to God's Holy Providence in all things. She also had a tender devotion to Saint John the Evangelist and always told medical doctors who inquired about the identity of her primary care physician the following:

"I have five doctors: Saint Luke, Saints Cosmas and Damian, Saint Pantaleon, and Saint Apollonia."

Several priests of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen were good enough to offer Holy Mass for Mrs. Burgess and her family at their home in Warwick, Rhode Island, once a month. Father Benedict Hughes, CMRI, did this faithfully for many years prior to the stationing of Father Robert Letourneau as the pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Salem, New Hampshire. Father Letourneau diligently attended to the care of Mrs, Burgess's immortal soul whenever she was stricken with one or more physical afflictions or injuries, including in the days prior to her death on August 2, 2023.

Together with two other Catholic ladies, Mrs. Barbara Burgess met with the late Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna, O.P., in his office at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in Monroe, Connecticut, in early 2007, and it was from that point forward that the three ladies were unyielding in their commitment to the truth about the state of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal. Mrs. Burgess kept in contact with His Excellency even after he had moved to Michigan in 2011 and had spoken with him on the phone just a few months before his death at the age of eighty-eight in 2015. Perhaps it should be noted as well that Mrs. Burgess, who had very limited financial means, truly gave the widow's mite to support traditional Catholic bishops and priests. 

A Requiem Mass will be offered for Mrs. Barbara Burgess, who was born on April 14, 1933, and died on August 2, 2023, on Monday, August 7, 2023. Details can be found here: Barbara Burgess Obituary,

Finally, Mrs. Burgess, whom I first met in the 1990s when speaking in Rhode Island during my years of association as a writer and associate editor of The Wanderer, convinced us to have a devotion to the late Father Leo Franklin McNamara, about whom I wrote the following commentary ten years ago: Better Than Realtors And Ebay. A reference to Mrs. Burgess appears at the beginning of this commentary, and we have maintained our devotion to Father McNamara to this day thanks to her introducing him to us.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. 

May her soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

A blessed Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to you all.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Peter, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint James the Greater, pray for us.

Pope Saint Sixtus, Saints Felicissimus and Agapitus, pray for us.

Today is the Feast of Saint Dominic de Guzman, who had such great zeal for souls from his earliest days in seminary. As is well known, it was a conversation with an innkeeper in the Albigensian stronghold of Toulouse, France, changed the whole direction of his priesthood as he sought to win back souls from the darkness of an early forerunner of Calvinism, Albigensianism.

Our Lady, sent by her Divine Son out of the ineffable Mercy that He has in His Most Sacred Heart, which was formed out of her own Immaculate Heart, to bring back the lost sheep (and not to beat up on the sheep when their souls are sorely distressed) out of the new form of Manicheaism that had arisen in southern France, gave Saint Dominic her Most Holy Rosary to the be the weapon to crush the Albigensian heresy. Saint Dominic de Guzman used the weapon of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary very well and taught others how to do so.

Every Catholic, of course, owes a great deal to Saint Dominic, who walked between southern France and Rome several times during his life--and who accompanied two of the first Dominicans, Saints Hyacinth and his brother, Saint Ceslaus, on the first leg of their trip in Italy back to Krakow before he, Saint Dominic, had to turn back.

I am still working on the next original commentary.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Dominic de Guzman, pray for us.

Today is the Feast of the great Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, the Patron of Moral Theologians. It was over fourteen years ago now that I recorded each of the Sunday sermons of Saint Alphonsus for the "Save Thy Souls" section of Traditional Catholic Sermons.org. It was a very sobering experience as I recognized that Saint Alphonsus was speaking directly to me, condemning my sins and my tepidity.

Ouch.

He certainly gave me what for, and I am grateful that he did so.

This particular reflection was enlarged last year to include three complete sermons composed by Saint Alphonsus de Ligouori. Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, the founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorists), was particularly emphatic in teaching us that we must avoid sins of human respect. That is, we can show no partiality or favoritism to those in power if they are doing things that put the temporal or, more important, the eternal welfare into jeopardy.

This applies to the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who blasphemes God on a regular basis and considers it his duty in the name of "mercy" to enable hardened, unrepentant sinners in their lives that are leading to them eternal perdition, and to most of his "bishops," men who believe that the sheep are their enemies and that they can stonewall and intimidate the sheep into remaining silent about real and documented abuses of power and real and documented violations of the integrity of the Holy Faith:

"And when there is question of the divine honour, we should not be frightened by the dignity of the man who offends God; let us say to him openly: This is sinful; it cannot be done. Let us imitate the Baptist, who reproved King Herod for living his brother's wife and said to him: 'It is not lawful for thee to have her'--Matt., xiv. 4. Men indeed shall regard us as fools, and turn us into derision; but, on the day of judgment they shall acknowledge that they have been foolish, and we have shall have the glory of being numbered among the saints. They shall say: 'These are they whom we had some time in derision. . . . . We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honour. Behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints'--Wis., v. 3, 4, 5. (Sixth Sunday After Easter: On Human Respect.)

Also of interest on this feast day might be Jorge Mario Bergoglio Blasphemes Saint Alphonsus de Liguori.

Work on the commentary I had been preparing for posting today had to be suspended because, just like clockwork, One Set of Rules for All Jack Smith announced another indictment against former President Donald John Trump just a day after the latest set of revelations about Joseph Robinette Biden's involvement in his family's foreign influence peddling schemes. This is all a farce, of course, but it is but the logical consequence of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic revolutions against Christ the King and His true Church as men who live not for eternity will forever be grasping for the things of this earth (money, power, influence) without regard for the sanctification and salvation of their immortal souls. This applies just as much to the narccisistic Trump as to his amoral persecutors in the Biden administration. A commentary on this latest dog and pony show will be published as soon as possible.

Finally, Senor Jorge is in Portugal for another "World Youth Day," meaning that I must do a lot of penance in the next few days dealing with his continued efforts to speed up the eradication of all vestiges of recognizable Catholic doctriine within the countefeit church of conciliarism to make that false religious sect safe for the One World Ecumenical Church that is entirely subservient to its Judeo-Masonic masters in the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Pope Saint Stephen I, pray for us.

After having given the vast throngs of people who flock to this site daily in search of commentaries Another Invitation to See the Events of the Day Through the Eyes of the True Faith, I am presenting a short reflection on the Feast of Saint Peter's Chains and the Commemoration of the Holy Machabees.

It is not for nothing that Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII suppressed the Feast of Saint Peter's Chains sixty years ago as, whether he knew it or not, a way for the adverstary to hide the events recounted in the Lesson read at Holy Mass on this feast when it does not on a Sunday and thus not come to the realization that Roncalli himself had taken the papacy in chains so that the work of the new religion and its new church could commence.

Today, Tuesday, August 1, 2023, is also one of the two days in the liturgical year on which one can earn the Toties Qutoies indulgence for the Poor Souls in Purgatory. This indulgence can be earned by entering into a Catholic church and then praying the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory be prayers six times each for the needs of Holy Mother Church, especially for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter, an intention for which we must pray fervently every day without fail. 

It is my hope to have a new commentary posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2023, the Feast of Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri, in addition to a republished commentary on the feast of the Patron Saint of Moral Theologians.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Peter, pray for us.

Saint Paul, pray for us.

The Holy Machabees, pray for us. 

This brief commentary deals with some of the events of the past week as I invite the readers of this very uninfluential website to rise above the agitation of the moment and to look beyond the conflicts between the "left" and the "right" and thus to view the world and everything in it exclusively through the eyes of the true Faith, which is the necessary precondition for the sanctification and salvation of our immortal souls and thus of all true social order within and among nations.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, S.J., pray for us.

Today is the Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a valiant solder in the Army of Christ, a soldier who did battle with the very errors of Martin Luther that are the foundation of much of the counterfeit church of conciiarism and have been celebrated openly by that anti-Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Saint Ignatius laid down his military armor in front of an image of Our Lady in the Benedictine monastery in Montserrat, Spain, on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1522, becoming a soldier in the army of Christ the King. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was always in the "company of Jesus," always seeking to advance the cause of the Holy Faith. Saint Ignatius of Loyola attracted men of character and determination of purpose right from the beginning, men who were serious about retarding the advances of the Protestant Revolution and seeking the conversion of pagans in far away lands.

The devil hated this good work of the Society of Jesus, which he why he sought to corrupt the sons of Saint Ignatius in the Twentieth Century by means of the various propositions of Modernism. The most corrupt of them all now, of course, is Jorge Mario Bergoglio. We need to pray to Saint Ignatius and his company of Jesuit saints in Heaven, each of whom was so tenderly devoted to the Mother of God, to help us to be as brave and faithful and gallant as they were in defending the Sacred Honor of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, S.J. pray for us.