Admiringly Understanding the Mind of an Arch-Americanist

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Hog heaven awaits those mired in the slop of the false religion that is Americanism next week. An arch-Americanist by the name of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is coming to the United States of America from April 16 to April 21, 2008. The false "pontiff" will be effusive in the praise he heaps on the "genius" of the American founding principles and how those some of those principles (separation of Church and State, religious and civil liberty, pluralism) helped to formulate the very ethos of conciliarism itself.

As a species of Modernism, the Americanist heresy did indeed help to pave the way for conciliarism's view of Church-State relations and for its embrace of the heresy of religious liberty, sweeping away the absolute, immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King, an "anachronism" that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes is never to be recaptured as his counterfeit church has made its "reconciliation" with the principles of the American and the French Revolutions. It is enough for Joseph Ratzinger that the "church" retains the ability to "say" to the civil state "whatever" it wants. There is no necessity for the civil state to recognize the Catholic Church as the true religion, no obligation on the part of the civil state to help to foster those conditions in civil society wherein citizens would be better able to sanctify and to thus save their souls as members of the Catholic Church.

The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was an unquestioned champion of the Social Reign of Christ the King, was aghast at the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger's blithe acceptance of the modern, religiously indifferent civil state as being perfectly compatible with the Faith:

Under pressure, Rome gave in. On July 14 [1987], Cardinal Ratzinger received Archbishop Lefebvre at the Holy Office. At first the Cardinal persisted in arguing that "the State is incompetent in religious matters."

"But the State must have an ultimate and eternal end," replied the Archbishop.

"Your Grace, that is the case for the Church, not the State. By itself the State does not know."

Archbishop Lefebvre was distraught: a Cardinal and Prefect of the Holy Office wanted to show him that the State can have no religion and cannot prevent the spread of error. However, before talking about concessions, the Cardinal made a threat: the consequence of an illicit episcopal consecration would be "schism and excommunication."

"Schism?" retorted the Archbishop. "If there is a schism, it is because of what the Vatican did at Assisi and how you replied to our Dubiae: the Church is breaking with the traditional Magisterium. But the Church against her past and her Tradition is not the Catholic Church; this is why being excommunicated by a liberal, ecumenical, and revolutionary Church is a matter of indifference to us."

As this tirade ended, Joseph Ratzinger gave in: "Let us find a practical solution. Make a moderate declaration on the Council and the new missal a bit like the one that Jean Guitton has suggested to you. Then, we would give you a bishop for ordinations, we could work out an arrangement with the diocesan bishops, and you could continue as you are doing. As for a Cardinal Protector, and make your suggestions."

How did Marcel Lefebvre not jump for joy? Rome was giving in! But his penetrating faith went to the very heart of the Cardinal's rejection of doctrine. He said to himself: "So, must Jesus no longer reign? Is Jesus no longer God? Rome has lost the Faith. Rome is in apostasy. We can no longer trust this lot!" To the Cardinal, he said:

"Eminence, even if you give us everything--a bishop, some autonomy from the bishops, the 1962 liturgy, allow us to continue our seminaries--we cannot work together because we are going in different directions. You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them.

"For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.

Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal's attitude" "Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of." Then Ratzinger tried to argue that "the Church can still say whatever she wants to the State," while Lefebvre, the intuitive master of Catholic metaphysics, did not lose sight of the true end of human societies: the Reign of Christ." Fr. de Tinguy hit the nail on the head when he said of Marcel Lefebvre: "His faith defies those who love theological quibbles." (His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, 2004, pp. 547-548.)

 

Let me once again demonstrate, especially for those slow to accept the fact that the Catholic Church has taught perennially that the civil state must recognize the true religion and foster those conditions in civil society conducive to the sanctification and salvation of the souls of its citizens, the absolute incompatibility of Ratzinger's blithe acceptance of the principles of the modern civil state, an acceptance that is far, far different than a pragmatic accommodation on the part of the Church to the actual reality of the modus operandi of the modern civil state while continuing to preach and teach about the necessity of converting each nation to the true Faith, with the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church, as expressed so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

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

 

As I had done in An Antithesis of Truth a little over a month ago now on the occasion of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's receiving the credentials of Dr. Mary Ann Glendon as the new Ambassador of the United States of America to the conciliar Holy See, let me provide other examples of the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on the Church-State relations to demonstrate that the current false "pontiff's" acceptance of and praise for the American Church-State "model" is just as much at odds with Catholic teaching as his embrace of false ecumenism and "inter-religious prayer," elements of which will also be on full and scandalous display during his upcoming visit to the United States of America (see Many Acts of Evil Demand Many Acts of Reparation):

Nor can We predict happier times for religion and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

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.)

55. The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852. (Condemned proposition in The Syllabus of Errors, Pope Pius IX, 1864.)

As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.

Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate.

For the only-begotten Son of God established on earth a society which is called the Church, and to it He handed over the exalted and divine office which He had received from His Father, to be continued through the ages to come. "As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you." "Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." Consequently, as Jesus Christ came into the world that men "might have life and have it more abundantly," so also has the Church for its aim and end the eternal salvation of souls, and hence it is so constituted as to open wide its arms to all mankind, unhampered by any limit of either time or place. "Preach ye the Gospel to every creature."

Over this mighty multitude God has Himself set rulers with power to govern, and He has willed that one should be the head of all, and the chief and unerring teacher of truth, to whom He has given "the keys of the kingdom of heaven." "Feed My lambs, feed My sheep." "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not."

This society is made up of men, just as civil society is, and yet is supernatural and spiritual, on account of the end for which it was founded, and of the means by which it aims at attaining that end. Hence, it is distinguished and differs from civil society, and, what is of highest moment, it is a society chartered as of right divine, perfect in its nature and in its title, to possess in itself and by itself, through the will and loving kindness of its Founder, all needful provision for its maintenance and action. And just as the end at which the Church aims is by far the noblest of ends, so is its authority the most exalted of all authority, nor can it be looked upon as inferior to the civil power, or in any manner dependent upon it.

In very truth, Jesus Christ gave to His Apostles unrestrained authority in regard to things sacred, together with the genuine and most true power of making laws, as also with the twofold right of judging and of punishing, which flow from that power. "All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth: going therefore teach all nations . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."And in another place: "If he will not hear them, tell the Church." And again: "In readiness to revenge all disobedience." And once more: "That . . . I may not deal more severely according to the power which the Lord hath given me, unto edification and not unto destruction." Hence, it is the Church, and not the State, that is to be man's guide to heaven. It is to the Church that God has assigned the charge of seeing to, and legislating for, all that concerns religion; of teaching all nations; of spreading the Christian faith as widely as possible; in short, of administering freely and without hindrance, in accordance with her own judgment, all matters that fall within its competence.

Now, this authority, perfect in itself, and plainly meant to be unfettered, so long assailed by a philosophy that truckles to the State, the Church, has never ceased to claim for herself and openly to exercise. The Apostles themselves were the first to uphold it, when, being forbidden by the rulers of the synagogue to preach the Gospel, they courageously answered: "We must obey God rather than men." This same authority the holy Fathers of the Church were always careful to maintain by weighty arguments, according as occasion arose, and the Roman Pontiffs have never shrunk from defending it with unbending constancy. Nay, more, princes and all invested with power to rule have themselves approved it, in theory alike and in practice. It cannot be called in question that in the making of treaties, in the transaction of business matters, in the sending and receiving ambassadors, and in the interchange of other kinds of official dealings they have been wont to treat with the Church as with a supreme and legitimate power. And, assuredly, all ought to hold that it was not without a singular disposition of God's providence that this power of the Church was provided with a civil sovereignty as the surest safeguard of her independence.

The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right. But, inasmuch as each of these two powers has authority over the same subjects, and as it might come to pass that one and the same thing -- related differently, but still remaining one and the same thing -- might belong to the jurisdiction and determination of both, therefore God, who foresees all things, and who is the author of these two powers, has marked out the course of each in right correlation to the other. "For the powers that are, are ordained of God." Were this not so, deplorable contentions and conflicts would often arise, and, not infrequently, men, like travelers at the meeting of two roads, would hesitate in anxiety and doubt, not knowing what course to follow. Two powers would be commanding contrary things, and it would be a dereliction of duty to disobey either of the two.

But it would be most repugnant to them to think thus of the wisdom and goodness of God. Even in physical things, albeit of a lower order, the Almighty has so combined the forces and springs of nature with tempered action and wondrous harmony that no one of them clashes with any other, and all of them most fitly and aptly work together for the great purpose of the universe. There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man. The nature and scope of that connection can be determined only, as We have laid down, by having regard to the nature of each power, and by taking account of the relative excellence and nobleness of their purpose. One of the two has for its proximate and chief object the well-being of this mortal life; the other, the everlasting joys of heaven. Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority. Jesus Christ has Himself given command that what is Caesar's is to be rendered to Caesar, and that what belongs to God is to be rendered to God.

There are, nevertheless, occasions when another method of concord is available for the sake of peace and liberty: We mean when rulers of the State and the Roman Pontiff come to an understanding touching some special matter. At such times the Church gives signal proof of her motherly love by showing the greatest possible kindliness and indulgence.

Such, then, as We have briefly pointed out, is the Christian organization of civil society; not rashly or fancifully shaped out, but educed from the highest and truest principles, confirmed by natural reason itself.

In such organization of the State there is nothing that can be thought to infringe upon the dignity of rulers, and nothing unbecoming them; nay, so far from degrading the sovereign power in its due rights, it adds to it permanence and luster. Indeed, when more fully pondered, this mutual coordination has a perfection in which all other forms of government are lacking, and from which excellent results would flow, were the several component parts to keep their place and duly discharge the office and work appointed respectively for each. And, doubtless, in the constitution of the State such as We have described, divine and human things are equitably shared; the rights of citizens assured to them, and fenced round by divine, by natural, and by human law; the duties incumbent on each one being wisely marked out, and their fulfillment fittingly insured. In their uncertain and toilsome journey to the everlasting city all see that they have safe guides and helpers on their way, and are conscious that others have charge to protect their persons alike and their possessions, and to obtain or preserve for them everything essential for their present life. Furthermore, domestic society acquires that firmness and solidity so needful to it from the holiness of marriage, one and indissoluble, wherein the rights and duties of husband and wife are controlled with wise justice and equity; due honor is assured to the woman; the authority of the husband is conformed to the pattern afforded by the authority of God; the power of the father is tempered by a due regard for the dignity of the mother and her offspring; and the best possible provision is made for the guardianship, welfare, and education of the children.

In political affairs, and all matters civil, the laws aim at securing the common good, and are not framed according to the delusive caprices and opinions of the mass of the people, but by truth and by justice; the ruling powers are invested with a sacredness more than human, and are withheld from deviating from the path of duty, and from overstepping the bounds of rightful authority; and the obedience is not the servitude of man to man, but submission to the will of God, exercising His sovereignty through the medium of men. Now, this being recognized as undeniable, it is felt that the high office of rulers should be held in respect; that public authority should be constantly and faithfully obeyed; that no act of sedition should be committed; and that the civic order of the commonwealth should be maintained as sacred.

So, also, as to the duties of each one toward his fellow men, mutual forbearance, kindliness, generosity are placed in the ascendant; the man who is at once a citizen and a Christian is not drawn aside by conflicting obligations; and, lastly, the abundant benefits with which the Christian religion, of its very nature, endows even the mortal life of man are acquired for the community and civil society. And this to such an extent that it may be said in sober truth: "The condition of the commonwealth depends on the religion with which God is worshipped; and between one and the other there exists an intimate and abiding connection." (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

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

 

Pope Leo XIII specifically rejected the American model of Church-State relations:

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani.)

 

What does of any this mean to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Nothing. Nothing at all. He does not consider himself bound by any teaching of the Catholic Church that he does not "like," those teachings that he believes were contingent upon a subjective consideration of the circumstances of the time but which need to be "adjusted" in light of changed circumstances of our own contemporary times:

The text [of the Second Vatican Council] also presents the various forms of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms -- perhaps for the first time with this clarity -- that there are decisions of the Magisterium that cannot be a last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications.

“In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment.” (L'Osservatore Romano, July 2, 1990)

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

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. (Benedict XVI, Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature (December 22, 2005.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's unabashed enthusiasm for the multiple heresies of Americanism will be on full display when he visits the White House on April 16, 2008, and when he address Catholic academics attached to the conciliar structures at The Catholic University of America on April 17, 2008, if not on other occasions. Pluralism will be extolled. Religious liberty will be exalted. The separation of Church and State will be hailed as a protection of the rights of the "church" to speak to the civil state as she wants. And all of it--each and every little bit of it--will be in contradiction of the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church.

Sandro Magister, the editor of the Chiesa journal, has written admiringly of the mind of the arch-Americanist, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

This is an easy forecast to make, if one only looks at what the pope said last February 29, while receiving the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon. For Benedict XVI the United States is a model to be imitated by all. It is the country born and founded "on the self-evident truth that the Creator has endowed each human being with certain inalienable rights," among the first of which is liberty.

* * *
With this pope, the United States is no longer held up for scolding by the Vatican authorities. Until a few decades ago, it was tasked with being the temple of Calvinist capitalism, of social Darwinism, of the electric chair, with a hair trigger in every corner of the world.

Today these paradigms seem to have been set aside to a great extent. The Church of Rome vigorously contested the military attack on the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Even Benedict XVI. But it is not now pressing for the withdrawal of the soldiers. It wants them to remain there "on a peacekeeping mission," including the defense of the Christian minorities.

In any case, the general judgment on the United States has shifted to the positive, to the same extent that judgments on Europe have become more pessimistic. To ambassador Glendon, Benedict XVI said that he admires "the American people's historic appreciation of the role of religion in shaping public discourse," a role that in other places – read, Europe – is "contested in the name of a straitened understanding of political life." With the consequences that stem from this on the points that are most crucial to the Church, like "legal protection for God's gift of life from conception to natural death," marriage, the family.  http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/196448?eng=y

 

A glimpse of the approach that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI will take in his forthcoming visit to the United States of American can be gleaned from the message he has recorded to the American people prior to his departrue from Rome:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in the United States of America,

The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you! In just a few days from now, I shall begin my apostolic visit to your beloved country. Before setting off, I would like to offer you a heartfelt greeting and an invitation to prayer. As you know, I shall only be able to visit two cities: Washington and New York. The intention behind my visit, though, is to reach out spiritually to all Catholics in the United States. At the same time, I earnestly hope that my presence among you will be seen as a fraternal gesture towards every ecclesial community, and a sign of friendship for members of other religious traditions and all men and women of good will. The risen Lord entrusted the Apostles and the Church with his Gospel of love and peace, and his intention in doing so was that the message should be passed on to all peoples.

At this point I should like to add some words of thanks, because I am conscious that many people have been working hard for a long time, both in Church circles and in the public services, to prepare for my journey. I am especially grateful to all who have been praying for the success of the visit, since prayer is the most important element of all. Dear friends, I say this because I am convinced that without the power of prayer, without that intimate union with the Lord, our human endeavours would achieve very little. Indeed this is what our faith teaches us. It is God who saves us, he saves the world, and all of history. He is the Shepherd of his people. I am coming, sent by Jesus Christ, to bring you his word of life.

Together with your Bishops, I have chosen as the theme of my journey three simple but essential words: "Christ our hope". Following in the footsteps of my venerable predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul II, I shall come to United States of America as Pope for the first time, to proclaim this great truth: Jesus Christ is hope for men and women of every language, race, culture and social condition. Yes, Christ is the face of God present among us. Through him, our lives reach fullness, and together, both as individuals and peoples, we can become a family united by fraternal love, according to the eternal plan of God the Father. I know how deeply rooted this Gospel message is in your country. I am coming to share it with you, in a series of celebrations and gatherings. I shall also bring the message of Christian hope to the great Assembly of the United Nations, to the representatives of all the peoples of the world.

Indeed, the world has greater need of hope than ever: hope for peace, for justice, and for freedom, but this hope can never be fulfilled without obedience to the law of God, which Christ brought to fulfillment in the commandment to love one another. Do to others as you would have them do to you, and avoid doing what you would not want them to do. This "golden rule" is given in the Bible, but it is valid for all people, including non-believers. It is the law written on the human heart; on this we can all agree, so that when we come to address other matters we can do so in a positive and constructive manner for the entire human community. Video-Message to Catholics and people of the United States of America on the occasion of the upcoming Apostolic Journey (April 8, 2008)

 

There is only one way to show true friendship for "members of other religious traditions and all men and women of good will:" to seek with urgency their unconditional conversion to the Catholic Church. There is only one path by which men can act in a "positive and constructive manner for the entire human community:" by the civil state's formal recognition of the Catholic Church as its official religion and that it has a solemn obligation to help to foster those conditions in civil society favorable to the sanctifcation and salvation of the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ offered up His very life on the wood of the Holy Cross. The lost sheep do not need half-measures. They need the whole truth of Christ the King and not one word of praise for a political system wherein He has been, to use the words of Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, "despised, neglected and ignored." Indeed, Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of the Universal Kingship of Jesus Christ for the following reason:

Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ. It will call to their minds the thought of the last judgment, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults; for his kingly dignity demands that the State should take account of the commandments of God and of Christian principles, both in making laws and in administering justice, and also in providing for the young a sound moral education.

 

Past "papal" visits to the United States of America since that of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI in 1965 have changed nothing about life in this country. The Social Reign of Christ the King was not proclaimed. I was present at two "papal Masses" (Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.) and one "papal" address (to Catholic educators, delivered at The Catholic University of America on Sunday, October 7) in 1979. Stirring words were uttered. Catholics returned home, many of them continuing to vote for fully pro-abortion candidates of both major political parties and to be immersed headlong into our culture of pluralism. Little did I realize that a short distance away from Washington, D.C., Father Anthony Cekada, then with the Society of Saint Pius X, was warning the flock at Saint Athanasius Church in Vienna, Virginia, not to be taken in by the appearances of Catholicism being given by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. Father Cekada was indeed quite prophetic, understanding the Modernist mind of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II quite well.

Oh, yes, there were appearances of Catholicism in 1979, as there were in 1987 (when I was present as John Paul II addressed Catholic educators in New Orleans at Xavier University and at his "Mass" at the University of New Orleans on Sunday, September 12) and in 1995 (when I covered--and wrote in fairly glowing terms about--the "papal" visit for The Wanderer at Newark International Airport, Giants Stadium, Aqueduct Race Track, the United Nations, and the Sheep Meadow in Central Park in the Borough of Manhattan). A mixture of Catholicism and conciliarism was spread during these visits, replete with the horror of the Novus Ordo service (some with "rock" music, especially at the "Mass" at Oriole Park at Camden Yards n Baltimore, Maryland, on October 8, 1995), leaving Catholics as confused as ever. The same will be true now as the Social Reign of Christ the King is "despised, neglected and ignored" by the man who believes himself to be the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of Saint Peter despite the appearances of Catholic sobriety that will stand in contrast to the clownishness of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II.

It is not possible to talk about "ending abortion" and building "respect for life" unless one speaks of the proximate reasons why child killing under cover of law has become a reality: the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King by the Protestant Revolt and institutionalized by Judeo-Masonry. It is not possible to retard any social evils unless there is an effort to exhort men and their nations to convert to the Catholic Faith, as Pope Saint Pius X noted in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

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

Note this and note it well, however: it is not a token of "friendship" for those in "other religions" to esteem the symbols of their false religions. As noted two days ago in Many Acts of Evil Demand Many Acts of Reparation, anyone who shows "esteem" for the symbols of false religions is a mortal, dread enemy of God Himself--and of the poor souls steeped in those false religions.

Unfortunately for Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Dr. Mary Ann Glendon, there is no naturalistic, inter-religious or non-denominational way to retard evils such as the surgical or chemical assassination of preborn children in their mothers' wombs. The very fact that almost every nation in the world, including the United States of America, is characterized by a legal assault upon the innocent preborn--and why all manner of other abject evils are protected under cover of law--is the result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and institutionalized and propagandized by Judeo-Masonry. The Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost has occurred. Our Lord has wrought His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross. He has founded His true Church on the Rock of Peter, the Pope. The Natural Law in and of itself is insufficient to retard the evils of the day. Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order, a truth that Joseph Ratzinger, who holds to the pluralist model, does not accept.

Once again, consider this brief passage from Pope Leo XIII's 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.

The Catholic Faith is absolutely necessary to guide men in their own personal lives and as they act together with other men in the institutions of civil governance. Pope Saint Pius X noted this in Notre Charge Apostolique, 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 Pius XI made the same point in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.

Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)

Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.

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

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

 

Although a separate commentary will be written soon on Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's forthcoming address to the United Masonic Nations organization, suffice for the present moment to note that that address will extol the Natural Law as the basis for a just social order absent an understanding of that Natural Law as it has been entrusted to the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church, absent any mention of the sacred rights of Christ the King, the One and only guarantor of the order within souls and within nations. Yes, he will mention "Christian hope." That hope is to be found only in the Catholic Church and nowhere else. There is only one path to peace: Catholicism and nothing else.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not see this truth. No, he sees the pluralism of the United States of America as the model for the rest of the world, not as an evil consequence of evil forces that are reversible by means of the graces won for us on Calvary by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood and that flow into human hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All graces.

 

As forewarned is forearmed against the elegies of praise that will be offered for one of the chief cornerstones of conciliarism, that is, Americanism, perhaps it would a review of some of these points, made in  Babbling Inanities of Americanism, would be useful by way of providing a a thumbnail review of why Americanism is a heresy:

Americanism is the exaltation of the spirit of individual human abilities to "build" the "better world" without a complete and humble submission to everything contained in the Deposit of Faith that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of the God the Holy Ghost, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church that He Himself created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. It is thus the exaltation of religious indifferentism (the belief that it doesn't matter what religion one belongs to, if any religion at all, as long as one is a "good" person) over the necessity of belief in the one and only true Faith, Catholicism.

Have you ever seen the following saying on the back of a tractor-trailer truck? "Start your week right: Attend the Church of your choice." This is an expression of pure, unadulterated Americanism, the likes of which have been condemned by pope after pope prior to 1958 in no certain terms, no ambiguity, no nuance, no concessions to any false concept known as the "new evangelization," no disparagement of proselytism, no mention of engaging in "dialogue" with unbelievers, no efforts to discourage efforts to convert Protestants:

Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that "there is one God, one faith, one baptism" may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that "those who are not with Christ are against Him," and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore "without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate." Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: "He who is for the See of Peter is for me." A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: "The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?" (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

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

Americanism is the exaltation of the ability of human beings to be virtuous on their own without belief in, access to or cooperation with the Sanctifying Graces that were won by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and that flow into human hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. It is thus the exaltation of the spirit of the heresy of semi-Pelagianism, which asserts that human beings are more or less self-redemptive as they stir up graces within themselves.

Americanism is the exaltation of the measure of personal and national greatness on the basis of naturalistic standards over the necessity of referring all things at all times to the final end of man, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity. It is thus the exaltation of the Judeo-Masonic spirit of  "brotherhood" over the Catholic teaching of the Communion of the Saints.

Americanism is the exaltation of the spirit of egalitarianism over the truth of the hierarchy that exists in the Order of Creation and in the Order of Grace, that is, the Order of Redemption, making it necessary for there to a separation of Church and State in order that "free men" can choose for themselves how to live. Americanism is, all of its invocations of a generic "God" notwithstanding, the exaltation of the deification of man over man's due submission to God and the authority of His true Church in all that pertains to the good of souls and to matters of fundamental justice in according with the binding precepts of His Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.

Americanism is the exaltation of the spirit of "civil" and "religious" liberty" over the true sense of liberty that comes only from the Catholic Faith. That is, Americanism is the exaltation of human independence over a due submission to and reliance upon the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church that sees in the Cross the very means by which we are truly free, that is, free from an enslavement to the power of sin and eternal death.

Americanism is the exaltation of individualism over the due submission that we must render in all humility to Christ the King as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through the Catholic Church. Americanism thus feeds into Protestant Pentecostalism and the whole ethos of the "Catholic Charismatic Renewal" as it eschews a complete submission of one's mind and will to the binding teaching of Holy Mother Church's magisterium in favor of an "individual relationship" with God the Holy Ghost whereby people think that they have a "private pipeline" to God and can decide for themselves what part of the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church they will and will not follow.

Pope Leo XIII noted this rejection of the exterior guidance of the Catholic Church in his Apostolical Letter on Americanism:

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

"And to each one of us grace is given according to the measure of the giving of Christ." -- Eph. iv, 7.

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

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

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

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

A thorough consideration of this point, in the supposition that no exterior guide is granted such souls, will make us see the difficulty of locating or determining the direction and application of that more abundant influx of the Holy Spirit so greatly extolled by innovators To practice virtue there is absolute need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, yet we find those who are fond of novelty giving an unwarranted importance to the natural virtues, as though they better responded to the customs and necessities of the times and that having these as his outfit man becomes more ready to act and more strenous in action. It is not easy to understand how persons possessed of Christian wisdom can either prefer natural to supernatural virtues or attribute to them a greater efficacy and fruifulness. Can it be that nature conjoined with grace is weaker than when left to herself? (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899.)

 

Americanism represents the exaltation the mania of "action" divorced from prayer, making false distinctions between "active" and "passive" virtue," leading many Catholics to consider praying Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, for example, as "doing nothing" to help one's country. Popes Leo XIII and Saint Pius X both discussed this aspect of Americanism:

This overesteem of natural virtue finds a method of expression in assuming to divide all virtues in active and passive, and it is alleged that whereas passive virtues found better place in past times, our age is to be characterized by the active. That such a division and distinction cannot be maintained is patent-for there is not, nor can there be, merely passive virtue. "Virtue," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "designates the perfection of some faculty, but end of such faculty is an act, and an act of virtue is naught else than the good use of free will," acting, that is to say, under the grace of God if the act be one of supernatural virtue.

He alone could wish that some Christian virtues be adapted to certain times and different ones for other times who is unmindful of the apostle's words: "That those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son."- Romans viii, 29. Christ is the teacher and the exemplar of all sanctity, and to His standard must all those conform who wish for eternal life. Nor does Christ know any change as the ages pass, "for He is yesterday and to-day and the same forever."-Hebrews xiii, 8. To the men of all ages was the precept given: "Learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart."-Matt. xi, 29.

To every age has He been made manifest to us as obedient even unto death; in every age the apostle's dictum has its force: "Those who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences." Would to God that more nowadays practiced these virtues in the degree of the saints of past times, who in humility, obedience and self-restraint were powerful "in word and in deed" -to the great advantage not only of religion, but of the state and the public welfare.

From this disregard of the - angelical virtues, erroneously styled passive, the step was a short one to a contempt of the religious life which has in some degree taken hold of minds. That such a value is generally held by the upholders of new views, we infer from certain statements concerning the vows which religious orders take. They say vows are alien to the spirit of our times, in that they limit the bounds of human liberty; that they are more suitable to weak than ›o strong minds; that so far from making for human perfection and the good of human organization, they are hurtful to both; but that this is as false as possible from the practice and the doctrine of the Church is clear, since she has always given the very highest approval to the religious method of life; nor without good cause, for those who under the divine call have freely embraced that state of life did not content themselves with the observance of precepts, but, going forward to the evangelical counsels, showed themselves ready and valiant soldiers of Christ. Shall we judge this to be a characteristic of weak minds, or shall we say that it is useless or hurtful to a more perfect state of life?

Those who so bind themselves by the vows of religion, far from having suffered a loss of liberty, enjoy that fuller and freer kind, that liberty, namely, by which Christ hath made us free. And this further view of theirs, namely, that the religious life is either entirely useless or of little service to the Church, besides being injurious to the religious orders cannot be the opinion of anyone who has read the annals of the Church. Did not your country, the United States, derive the beginnings both of faith and of culture from the children of these religious families? to one of whom but very lately, a thing greatly to your praise, you have decreed that a statue be publicly erected. And even at the present time wherever the religious families are found, how speedy and yet how fruitful a harvest of good works do they not bring forth! How very many leave home and seek strange lands to impart the truth of the gospel and to widen the bounds of civilization; and this they do with the greatest cheerfulness amid manifold dangers! Out of their number not less, indeed, than from the rest of the clergy, the Christian world finds the preachers of God's word, the directors of conscience, the teachers of youth and the Church itself the examples of all sanctity.

Nor should any difference of praise be made between those who follow the active state of life and those others who, charmed with solitude, give themselves to prayer and bodily mortification. And how much, indeed, of good report these have merited, and do merit, is known surely to all who do not forget that the "continual prayer of the just man" avails to placate and to bring down the blessings of heaven when to such prayers bodily mortification is added.

But if there be those who prefer to form one body without the obligation of the vows let them pursue such a course. It is not new in the Church, nor in any wise censurable. Let them be careful, however, not to set forth such a state above that of religious orders. But rather, since mankind are more disposed at the present time to indulge themselves in pleasures, let those be held in greater esteem "who having left all things have followed Christ." (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899.)

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to he reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?  (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

 

Americanism breeds the babbling inanities that are spoken constantly by the average citizen and by those in public life.

"God bless America." For what? For what? For religious indifferentism? For separation of Church and State? For semi-Pelagianism? For the proliferation of Protestant sects and Judeo-Masonic lodges in formerly Catholic countries? For Calvinistic materialism? For the Judeo-Masonic spirit of naturalism that has robbed, in conjunction with the ethos of conciliarism and of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo Missae itself, Catholics of any ability to view the events of this passing, mortal vale of tears through the eyes of the true Faith? For indifference in the wake of decriminalized baby-killing, whether by surgical or chemical means, under cover of law? For spreading contraception and the rot of popular culture (indecent fashions, pornography, magazines, books, "music," motion pictures) throughout the world so as to corrupt the morals and endanger the salvation of billions of souls? For what? For what?

"The shining city set on a hill." This blasphemous corruption of the words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ("You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid") taken from the Sermon on the Mount as recounted in the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (5: 14), to the land settled by the Catholic-hating Puritans, including the John Winthrop who was so praised by the late President Ronald Wilson Reagan? God meant to establish the followers and their false, wicked, diabolical theology and approach to materialism as the "beacon" for the rest of the world? John Winthrop as a "freedom man." No man is a freedom man unless he yokes himself to the Cross of the Divine Redeemer as that Cross is lifted high by the Catholic Church, the one and only "shining city that is set on a hill," the one and only beacon to the world.

The myths of what constitutes American national "greatness" and "goodness" were exploded by Orestes Brownson in National Greatness. Those same myths are repeated by naturalistic politics across the entire spectrum of the false opposites of our Judeo-Masonic system. They have wreaked havoc with the lives of so many Catholics to such an extent that there are people even in traditional Catholic chapels who use profanity to refer to the binding, immutable doctrine of the Church concerning the obligation of the civil state to recognize the true Church as its official religion. Profanity is used to disparage the teaching of the Catholic Church, she who teaches only that which her Divine Founder and Invisible Head has taught her to teach. This profanity is therefore directed against Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as a false idol, the United States of America, is exalted, as the authentic concept of patriotism, which seeks to will the good of one's nation, which is her Catholicization, is replaced by the sin against the First Commandment that is nationalism.

True, each nation has its own national character. There are natural virtues and traits that redound very favorably to the national character of a given people. The same is true in the United States of America, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out at the beginning of Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895. Unless those natural virtues and traits are supernaturalized, however, they must degenerate over the course of time as they are sustained by nothing other than mere human effort and subject to the vicissitudes of emotion and illogic and absurdity and relativism and all of the other false currents of Judeo-Masonic naturalism. Each person and each nation, including the United States of America, needs the true Faith to refine natural virtues and traits and to elevate and to ennoble them in the service of the advancement of a truly just society, one in which everything is undertaken with a view to advancing man's Last End.

Monsignor Henri Delassus's Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, available from Catholic Action Resource Center, is a masterful exposition of the pernicious influence of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic notions that flow into Americanism, which served as such an important contributing factor to the whole ethos of conciliarism itself, on Catholics in the United States of America and around the world. Monsignor Delassus's work, which provides insights into Pope Leo XIII's Apostolical Letter, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, to the longtime Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, James Cardinal Gibbons, January 22, 1899, and connects Americanism to the worldwide effort on the part of Talmudic Judaism to make war upon the Catholic Faith.

As Monsignor Delassus demonstrated, the spirit of Father Isaac Thomas Hecker and other Americanists fit very well into the goals of Talmudic Judaism to undermine the Faith of individual Catholics so that their first loyalties would be to the false concepts of Modernity, including Americanism, and then to their Church, which, if all went according to the plan, would itself one day "adopt" the false concepts of Modernity and make its "peace" with the revolutions of 1776 and 1789:

How so? Fr. Hecker tells us: "A call is made to men who possess this new synthesis of truth who are able to solve the problems of eliminating antagonisms, of being reconciled with the need of our era; of men who will take hold of all the aspirations of modern genius effected by science, of social activity, of politics, of spirituality (accordingly, spirituality itself would be called upon to defend the Church and to procure her universal triumph), of religion, and of the transformation of everything by means of the defense and universal triumph for the Church" (The Life of Fr. Hecker.)

Those who are not made aware of the world's current direction by the information that they derive from the newspaper--and this is the vast majority--will undoubtedly be surprised, in speaking to them of "Americanism" and of an "American Catholicism," we begin by calling their attention to the "Universal Israelite Alliance," entering through there upon a question, the Jewish Question, that presently fascinates the world and that is studied under every point of view, but which does not take into account, appears to be removed from, American Catholicism. This is nevertheless not imaginary on our part. The Universal Israelite Alliance is the center, the home, the bond of the antichristian conspiracy, by which Americanism seems to us to provide a support that it is not aware of which would not be given if it were understood and upon which this book is determined to direct its attention ...

One of the most malicious men of this [19th] century, the Jew [Jules Isaac] Cremieux, who was made grand Master of the French Grand Orient, who profited by the Revolution of 1848 [in France] by being raised to the Ministry of Justice, and by the disasters of 1870 which gave French citizenship to all the Jews of Algeria, founded in 1860 a cosmopolitan society which he endowed with the name of Universal Israelite Alliance. This association is not, as its name would have one believe, one of international Jewry, a bond to better facilitate links between Jews scattered around the surface of the globe; its aims bear upon something much more higher. It is an association open to all men without distinction of nationality nor of religion, under the high direction of Israel.

In order to be convinced of this, it is sufficient to open the publication that represents it, The Israelite Archives. "The Universal Israelite Alliance," it says there (xxx, pp. 514-515, for the year 1861), "must enter into all religions as it has penetrated all countries. I call to our association the brothers of every religion, that they would come to us! ... That enlightened men of all cults will unite themselves with this Universal Israelite Alliance" (ibid.) And why? "To break down the barriers which separate that which ONE DAY MUST BE UNITED. See there, Messieurs, the beauty, the great mission of Our Universal Israelite Alliance" (ibid.)

Profiting from their dispersion over every point of the globe, the Jews wish to be in humanity as a sort of leaven, in order to make of human society, presently divided into nations and various religions, "one sole and solid fraternity,"--the Israelite Archives say it less hypocritically: "A Jerusalem of new order, a holy extension from the East to the West, that must EXIT IN ITSELF in the double city of the Caesars and the Popes" (XXV, PP. 600-651, 1861) ...

The Jewish race "Jerusalem" intends to establish its reign over the entire world. "East and West," by establishing its authority upon the ruins of all existing powers. "Caesars and Popes." All authority must disappear in order to make way for the domination of Juda, which "will take the place" of all the existing powers in the spiritual order as well as in the temporal order  ...

... We see here that other idea advanced, the idea of the United States of Europe, parallel to the United States of America  ...

Here again, one could compare a strange accord between the ideas of the Americanists and the tendencies of those who obey the promptings given by the Universal Israelite Alliance. A most ardent promoter of Americanism, in a discourse given in 1894 to the International Scientific Congress of Catholics at Brussels, had this to say:

"We have thought that the opportunity has been provided us of giving to the ENTIRE WORLD a great lesson. When we study the map of Europe, we see there, marks of small divisions. Lines traversing these maps in every sense. They do not indicate only territorial divisions, they signify also: jealousy, hatred, hostility, divisions of hearts, that commits God knows how many millions of armed men for the destruction of the world. Thus, from all these nations, Providence has allowed immigration among us. All nations find themselves at home here [in the USA]; they have been living among themselves, fraternally, without any hostility. This is the privilege that God has granted to America, that of destroying the traditions of national jealousies that of that you have perpetuated in Europe, by melting them down in America unity."

Read on: "Americanism" [this pompous Americanist continues] "has received from God the mission of giving to the entire world this lesson: the time has come to put an end to the past: abolish frontiers, place all the people in the melting pot of the rights of man by the molding of united humanity, as we [in America] have been founded, we emigrants from all countries, in American unity. And peace shall reign in the world."

 

Yes, the peace of the slave under the tyranny of one man or of one race.

As of all the other ideas of the Americanists, that of he abolition of frontiers seems to appeal to our Christian democrats. . . .

So then, if the Talmudists [Orthodox Jews] differ from the liberals [Reform Jews], it is only upon knowing which is the better means to employ in order to accomplish the mission that Israel claims to have received ... The Talmudists continue to await a messiah of flesh and bone, who will make them masters of the universe; the liberals say that they do not have any other messiah to expect than the Revolution, "the principles" of which are dissolving of all society and preparing it for their rule. In order to spread these modern "principles," in order to have them bring about the fruits that they are awaiting, they deem it necessary to separate themselves from those observances to which their fathers had been attached, when they believed that their fidelity would hasten the coming of the personal messiah. This is a cumbersome burden, and what's more the Jew of this old way could not "make himself acceptable." He would nevertheless make himself acceptable in the eyes of the people among whom he wished to exercise a "proselytization."

And in what does this conversion consist? Is it to encourage the faithful of various religions to enter into Judaism? The Jews have never had the thought of making a conversion of this sort; they are a people a race apart, "the premier aristocracy of the world," the only ones who are truly men; they would never hear of elevating beings such as those who are human only in appearance ...

In the first place [The Universal Israelite Alliance] acts upon kings and parliaments in order to apply pressure on them, "this singular, indefatigable influence" that [Gourgenot] des Mousseaux already noted in 1869 [see, The Jew, Judaism and The Judaization of the Christian People, by Mousseaux].

What over and above does it demand? LAICIZATION.

There is no person, who is not blind, who cannot fail to see the prodigious efforts that are being made over the last century towards secularization, that is to say, efforts to remove all religious character from everywhere and everyone. Already, on the very origin of the Revolution, [Count Joseph] de Maistre, had remarked that his had been its essential character. "Examine," he said, "all the enterprises of this century, you have to see (these men of the Revolution) constantly occupied in the separation from divinity." It would take too long to show here the many aspects under which the question of laicization or secularization is presented: it spreads itself among all, and in every governmental organ, accordingly, all the forces of society are employed in the success of this work ...

Could Americanism, itself also, have come to lend itself to this work that is certainly not intentional? This is what we have already said is to be feared. It is well to examine this thing more closely.

What is certain, what is incontestable, is that between the Jewish spirit and the Americanist spirit there is a point of contact with the principles of '89 [i.e., the principles of the French Revolution].

We have heard the Jews proclaim and declare the course they are drawing. For the Americans their social and even religious state rests entirely upon these principles; they highly praise them, and the Americanists themselves would have us that "American ideas are those in which GOD wants all the civilized people of our time to be at home." So they conscientiously make of themselves evangelists." ( Monsignor Henri Delassus, Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, translated by Mr. Daniel Leonardi and published by Mr. Hugh Akins of Catholic Action Resources Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007--first printing in France, 1899, pp. 2-8.)

 

One sees in this extended passage from Monsignor Delassus's book some very prophetic insights into how the spirit of Talmudic Judaism, which is of the essence of Judeo-Masonry, was able to exploit the Americanist embrace of religious indifferentism and naturalism and semi-Pelagianism to lead directly to the Modernist spirit concerning Church-State relations that helped to shape conciliarism itself.

This is why it is so important for Talmudic organizations to insist that the only Catholics who are to be considered "safe," that is, those who are not deemed by Talmudic organizations to be "anti-Semitic," are those who adhere entirely to the falsehoods of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and to the spirit of the Novus Ordo service. Those Catholics who even dare to think about holding on to "past" concepts that have been repudiated by the Modernist warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth and all of the errors that flow therefrom (including false ecumenism and the clever devices used to defend it by means of the Vatican Ecumenical Directory and the "new evangelization of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI) must be hounded, identified and tarred and feathered as anti-Semites as they refuse to consent to the "new world order" wrought by the convergence of Americanism and Zionism and Modernism and Protestantism and all forms of naturalism that are represented so well in conciliar thought in what can be termed "conciliarspeak."

A few more passages from Monsignor Delassus's book will help to illustrate these points:

We hasten to say however that if these undying principles are advocated and propagated by the Jews and by the Americanists, they are put forward under quite different aspects.

The Jews hope to spread "liberal and humanitarian Israelitism," the Americanists "a new era for the Church," "an era that could hardly be conceived," so fertile and beautiful would She be! ...

Speaking of the false principle upon which the American Republic is constituted, separation of Church and State, Leo XIII said: "In effect, to wish that the State should be separated from the Church, is to wish, by a logical consequence, that the Church should be reduced to the liberty of living according to COMMON LAW. This separation, it is true, prevails in certain countries. It is a state of affairs that, though it has ITS NUMEROUS AND GRAVE INCONVENIENCES, still offers some advantages, especially when the legislator, in a fortunate inconsistency, is still not apt to be inspired by other than Christian principles; and the advantages, though THEY ARE NOT ABLE TO JUSTIFY THE FALSE PRINCIPE OF SEPARATION, NOR TO AUTHORIZE ITS DEFENSE, nevertheless they are worthy of toleration in order to, in practice, avoid something worse of all" (Leo XIII, Au milieu des solicitudes, February 16, 1892, on Church-State relations.)

A Belgian priest, who exercised the holy ministry in America, wrote in 1896 to the Courier of Brussels: "We are burdened here [in the USA] with something called Broadmindedness. It is not easy to render this word correctly in French. One could say that generally it means: "A quite great liberalism, an outrageous tolerance.(Monsignor Delassus, pp. 8-9.)

 

This quotation appears on the home page of this site (as it appeared on the sidebar on the left side of every printed issue, save one, of Christ or Chaos between August of 1996 and June of 2003):

"America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.... "...In the face of this broadmindedness, what the world needs is intolerance." (Fulton Sheen's "A Plea for Intolerance," 1931)

 

I will have to save for another day a commentary on the fact that although the late Archbishop Sheen saw the "broadmindedness" of the United States of America, he did not recognize that it was endemic to the very fabric of the false foundation provided it by the "founding fathers."

The next few passages from Monsignor Delassus' book provide evidence that the leading Americanists sounded just like Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in their embrace of the separation of Church and State and the accommodations that must be made to the "modern" world:

"American Catholicism" is not, in the thought of is promoters, a way of thinking and of practicing Catholicism solely in the contingent and changing things that would be common to the United States, in accordance with the particular conditions that are found on American soil. If this had been so, we would not have believed it incumbent upon us to be concerned with it.

No, their pretension is to speak to the entire universe: "The ear of the world is open to our thinking, if we know what to say to them," Msgr. [Bishop of Richmond, John] Keane had written to the Congress of Brussels. Andin fact they are speaking, and their word has not been without echo upon each part of France. If, at least, they had not put into the ear of the world anything other than what the Church leaves to our free discussion; but, no, as we shall see, we shall come to understand that their words are more or less imposed upon that which belongs to the very fundamentals of the Catholic faith.

The Abbot Klein had said in the preface he gave to The Life of Fr. Hecker: "His [Fr. Hecker's] unique and original work is to have shown the profound harmonies joining the new state of the human spirit to the true Christianity." "The American ideas that he recommended are, he knew, those which GOD wanted all civilized people of our time to be at home with  ..."

"The times are solemn," Msgr. Ireland had said, in his discourse, The Church and the Age. "At such an epoch of history ... the desire to know is intense ... The ambition of the spirit, fired up by the marvelous success in every field of human knowledge ... The human heart lets itself go to the strangest ideals ... Something new! Such is the ordered word of humanity, and to renew all things is its firm resolution.

"The moment is opportune for men of talent and character among the children of the Church of God. Today the routine of old times is dead;  today the ordinary means lead to the decrepitude of the aged; the crisis demands something new, something extraordinary; and it is upon this condition that the Church shall record the greatest of victories in the greatest of historical ages" (Discourse given in the Cathedral of Baltimore, October 18, 1893, on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Episcopal consecration of Cardinal Gibbons.) (Monsignor Delassus, pp. 9-10.)

 

Here is a roadmap to the "Second" Vatican Council and to the Novus Ordo itself. Americanism is restless, never satisfied with "tradition," always eager to "act," always desirous of that which is "new" (or novel), that which is full of "energy" and "dynamism," convinced of the human ability to "solve" problems and to create the "better" world. Americanism is a roadmap to both Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humane. It is a roadmap to the ruin of the Faith of millions and a major contributing factor in the worsening of the moral state of man in the world. Americanism is a lie from the devil.

To return to the text of Monsignor Delassus:

The article from Romanus (in The Contemporary Review), that one could read in its entirety in the book of Abbot Klein, Fr. Hecker, Is He a Saint?, is, as the author of that book observes, the SUM of the ideas of Americanism ...

In clear terms [it says there]: GOD is the author of error as He is of truth; the first precedes the second, and the second is born of the first providentially. It is the effect of the great law of evolution that rules everything in the world, and to which religion is subjected as all the rest.

Could the Christian faith be more profoundly attacked, more radically destroyed? ...

It would not take too much to prove blamable by these words, in the expression that they are presented throughout the democracies, that they are anything but children of the doctrine of evolution. That is, when the Americanists from here [Europe] and over there [America] speak to us of the future, of "the new future of the Church" and of its "marching ahead," and of its "new phase" and "of the times that are beginning," etc., etc.  ...

There had been in the Congress of Religion in Chicago, a discourse given by one of the leaders in Americanism, and which was entitled The Final Religion, The Ultimate Religion. In that speech, it had been said: "The religions consist of systems for the regular or irregular fulfillment of this great goal; the union of man with God." It is impossible to better describe the way and the end of religious evolution. But this end, the one that is to be watched out for, is not any different than that to which the United Israelite Alliance has directed its own efforts.

In the Fortnightly, on The Life of Fr, Hecker, Abbot Klein explains to his readers, how that book more suitably makes clear "the present evolution of humanity" and the nature "of studies and reforms that the new conditions of the world, at once well contain, imposes, without possible resistance, upon all those who would promote the INTERIOR ADVANCEMENT and the EXTERIOR EXPANSION of Christianity ..."

These novel ways, do they keep in their novelty the necessary moral uprightness? This is what it is reasonable to doubt.

"I want," Fr. Hecker said, "to open the door of the Church to the rationalists; they seem to me to be shut in on themselves. I sense that I am the pioneer to open the way. I am myself threading my way as in contraband [smuggling, interloping]" (The Life of Fr. Hecker).

 

That last sentence is an every foreshadowing of Joseph Ratzinger's whole view as to how to deal with secularism as he tries to convince everyone, including Mohammedans, to be participants in "inter-religious dialogue" and to accept the fundamental heresy, as Pope Pius VII termed it in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, of religious liberty.

To the denouement of the excerpts from Monsignor Delassus's book (which, along with the one about Cardinal Pie's work on the Social Reign of Christ the King, I urge each of m readers to purchase and to make available to others) must be read in its entirety by any serious Catholic:

His [Hecker's] biographer explains these words adding, "I should wish to ABOLISH CUSTOMS in order to provide easy and widespread entry into the Church for all those who have nothing other than reason for their guide."

Msgr. Keane does not speak otherwise. In an article published in the Bulletin of the Catholic Institute of Paris, he said: "Since a distinctive trait of the mission of America is, FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF BARRIERS and of hostilities that separate the races, could the return to unity among the children of GOD, so long divided, be analogous to those who are concerned with religious divisions and hostilities? Could not the congress of religions end up in an international congress of religions that would all come to be united in a tolerance and a mutual charity, where all forms of religion would stand up against all forms of irreligion? ... (Monsignor Delassus, p. 12)

 

Who just recently met--and prayed with--the head of the pro-abortion World Council of Churches? Who believes that "believers" working together can oppose secularism and its effects in the world? Who has dared to slap God in the face by permitting the horror of non-Catholic "Christian prayer" and other "services," things that are loathsome and detestable in the sight of God, to be offered in the Archbasilica of Saint Paul Outside of the Walls? Who? Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, a true ideological son of Isaac Thomas Hecker and John Ireland and John Keane and James Gibbons, that's who.

Oh, yes, finally to Monsignor Delassus:

And at the same time, this is the business of "liberal and humanitarian Israelitism." It also advocates in itself "the clearing up of all that which prevents Judaism from MAKING ITSELF ACCEPTED, in order not to fail in the proselytizing that the must exercise (Israelite Archives, 1867).

How would this be accomplished? By polemic [disputation]. The doctors, in combating error, had given vent to the truth.

All this must be changed from now on. The speaker already cited, at the Congress of Brussels, said: "It is not by controversy, but by irenism that we shall succeed" (Irenism," from the Greek word for "peace," is the ideology that hold out for peace at any cost--even to assimilating all religious differences].

For those who are not versed in Greek, we say that the first word points to the struggle, the discussion, and the second, peace, tolerance, conciliation. Thus, according to the Americanists, in order to succeed in making all men one sole flock under the same fold, all controversy must from now on be avoided. Disputes with the innovators had only multiplied division and separations, schisms and heresies: in the future, tolerance, the laying down of peace, shall support all the sheep of the Father's family--perhaps. But what kind of sheep? And wouldn't the flock in fact soon become contaminated.? (Monsignor Delassus, pp. 12-13.)

 

Pope Leo XIII saw this clearly, which is why he warned James Cardinal Gibbons in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, that Americanism portended grave dangers for the Faith in the future:

But if this [the term Americanism] is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive of and desire a Church in America that is to be different from which it is in the rest of the world.

 

As I have noted on any number of occasions in the past, the Potomac flows just as much in to the Tiber as does the Rhine. That is, the errors of the Americanists had just much a role to play in the creation of the counterfeit church of conciliarism as did the writings of the "new theologians" from Germany (and a few from The Netherlands and Switzerland thrown in for good measure).

The lie of Americanism is the lie of Martin Luther and Judeo-Masonry all rolled into one, that is, the lie that the true Church must not be recognized by the civil state as its official religion. This is false, as I quoted Pope Saint Pius X's firm declaration in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, to this effect endless numbers of times on this site. This lie was also exploded by the late Louis-Edouard-François-Desiré Cardinal Pie, as can be see in this passage from Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers:

"If Jesus Christ," proclaims Msgr. Pie in a magnificent pastoral instruction, "if Jesus Christ Who is our light whereby we are drawn out of the seat of darkness and from the shadow of death, and Who has given to the world the treasure of truth and grace, if He has not enriched the world, I mean to say the social and political world itself, from the great evils which prevail in the heart of paganism, then it is to say that the work of Jesus Christ is not a divine work. Even more so: if the Gospel which would save men is incapable of procuring the actual progress of peoples, if the revealed light which is profitable to individuals is detrimental to society at large, if the scepter of Christ, sweet and beneficial to souls, and perhaps to families, is harmful and unacceptable for cities and empires; in other words, if Jesus Christ to whom the Prophets had promised and to Whom His Father had given the nations as a heritage, is not able to exercise His authority over them for it would be to their detriment and temporal disadvantage, it would have to be concluded that Jesus Christ is not God". . . .

"To say Jesus Christ is the God of individuals and of families, but not the God of peoples and of societies, is to say that He is not God. To say that Christianity is the law of individual man and is not the law of collective man, is to say that Christianity is not divine. To say that the Church is the judge of private morality, but has nothing to do with public and political morality, is to say that the Church is not divine."

In fine, Cardinal Pie insists:

"Christianity would not be divine if it were to have existence within individuals but not with regard to societies."

Fr. de St. Just asks, in conclusion:

"Could it be proven in clearer terms that social atheism conduces to individualistic atheism?"

Moving ahead several pages in Fr. de St. Just's The Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, we continue with Msgr. Pie's observations:

"There is no more public morality, no more justice, you will say. These results astonish you; it should have been easy to predict. Isn't this as a pagan saying has it, that it would be easier to build a city in the air than to have a society without God. Isn't this what the Roman orator [Cicero] had said, that the stability of commerce and the greatest of virtues, which in justice, would be undermined along with loss of respect for a strong faith in the divinity? Hasn't the Holy Ghost declared in the most energetic language that when impious men rule men can expect nothing other than ruin: 'When the wicked shall bear rule, the people shall mourn' (Prov. 9: 2)

"You add: all is going, all is in decline. And still you are astonished again, this should have been easy to foresee ... Because the legislation has made a profession of neutrality and of abstention concerning the existence of God, upon what foundation will its proper authority be established? In permitting me to not acknowledge God, am I not authorized to belittle God Himself? We have not elected to place dogma in the law, you tell me. And I reply: if the dogma of the existence of God i snot found in the law, then the law is no longer so in the true sense of the word, it is nothing but a pipedream." (pp. 50-53, 63).

"Neither in His Person," Card, Pie said in a celebrated pastoral instruction, "nor in the exercise of His rights, can Jesus Christ be divided, dissolved, split up; in Him the distinction of natures and operations can never be separated or opposed; the divine cannot be incompatible to the human, nor the human to the divine. On the contrary, it is the peace, the drawing together, the reconciliation; it is the very character of union which has made the two things one: 'He is our peace, Who hat made both one. . .'  (Eph. 2:14). This is why St. John told us: 'every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and is now already in the world' (1 John 4:3; cf. also 1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John: 7). "So then, Card. Pie continues, "when I hear certain talk being spread around, certain pithy statements (i.e., 'Separation of Church and State,' for one, and the enigmatic axiom 'A free Church in a free State,' for another) prevailing from day to day, and which are being introduced into the heart of societies, the dissolvent by which the world must perish, I utter this cry of alarm: Beware the Antichrist."

Fr. de St. Just adds:

"Accordingly, the Bishop of Poitiers had always fought against THE SEPARATION OF Church and State. Moreover, he opposed all separations, that of reason and faith, of nature and grace, of natural religion and revealed religion, the separation of the philosopher and the Christian, of private man and public man. He saw in all these [separations] a resurgence of Manichean dualism and he had fought all these with, the supreme argument, the law formed by Christ. Therefore, it is in all truth, writing to [Minister of the Interior] the Count of Presigny, that he could render this testimony:

'We have nothing in common with the theorists of disunion and opposition of two orders, temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural. We struggle, on the contrary, with all our strength against these doctrines of separation which is leading to the denial of religion itself and of revealed religion