Being "Great" On One's Own

by Thomas A. Droleskey

This is one of those articles that deals with a theme that should be very familiar to readers of this site. What is that theme? Why, I am glad that you asked. Naturalism and its influence in our daily lives, "Oh, no, not this again, Droleskey." Oh, yes, this again. Naturalism. Hey, no one's forcing you to read this article you know, which is why recent articles have been read by somewhere between fifty and one hundred people. Ah, look at all of that "power" I have out there in cyberspace that seems to fascinate those with much larger audiences than this site has.

Oh, where was I? Yes, indeedy, boys and girls, I was talking about naturalism. How shall I begin. I know. I will past whole and entire several passages from an article that was published seven months ago now as I have attempted many times in the past to drive home the point that the naturalistic culture in which we live is premised upon a semi-Pelagian belief that man is capable of doing anything he sets his mind to doing, that all we need to do is to "stir up graces within ourselves," that we certainly need any particular religion, including the true religion, or any sort of liturgical ceremony to be "good."

What do I mean? Okeedokey, here's the pasted paragraphs:

The modern civil state was founded upon false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles. That is, the modern civil state, including the United States of America, is founded upon the belief that it is possible for men to order their own lives, both personally and socially, without referencing the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to the Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, the Catholic Church, for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication and that it is possible for men to be virtuous, no less holy, without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. The modern civil state is thus premised upon the false belief that it is neither wise or necessary to recognize the Catholic Faith as its official religion and that it is simply "good enough" for men of different religious beliefs--or no religious beliefs whatsoever--to work together as "brothers" for the common good, undertaken without regard to First and Last Things.

A civil state founded upon the premises of religious indifferentism will produce a society that is hostile even to the binding precepts of the Natural Law, to say nothing of one that is hostile to the Catholic Faith. Atheism becomes, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, the inevitable lowest common denominator in such a situation:

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.)

 

Social order was maintained in the United States of America in spite of its being founded on the false, naturalistic principles that have led us to the triumph of statism and the surrender of legitimate national sovereignty to various supranational organizations only to the extent that Actual Graces flowed out of the offerings of Holy Mass at the hands of true bishops and priests in the time between the nation's founding and the "Second" Vatican Council's "reconciliation" with those false principles, which played an important contributing role in the development of the synthetic concoction that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. The drying up of the wellspring of Actual Graces as a consequence of the abomination that is the Novus Ordo service has contributed to the expediting of social anarchy and the triumph of statism that must follow in the wake of such social disorder.

The overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and institutionalized by the multifaceted, inter-related naturalistic forces of Judeo-Masonry established the sovereignty of "man" and nations in the place of the Sovereignty of Christ the King. Men and nations, however, must be lost absent a due subordination to Christ the King as His Social Kingship must be exercised by His Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem. The overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and institutionalized by the multifaceted, inter-related naturalistic forces of Judeo-Masonry has deified "Man" as well as created veritable pantheons of naturalistic "saints" whose commitment to "liberty of man," we are told, is the foundation of our own "personal liberty" today.

Alas, the true measure of human liberty is a man's freedom from enslavement to the powers of sin and eternal death as he yokes Himself to the only true liberty that exists, the liberty won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the Divine Redeemer, Who poured out His Most Precious Blood for us as a Laver of Redemption. The Catholic Faith alone is the sole means by which men can live as truly free men who seek to scale the heights of personal sanctity as they make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for their sins and those of the whole world. Constitutions and declarations based upon a dismissal of the Sacred Rights of Christ the King in the name of "human liberty" wind up degenerating over the course of time to such an extent that even the precise meaning of the words contained in their own texts become as meaningless and as irrelevant to future generations as the precise meaning of the words contained in Sacred Scripture are to Protestants, who believe themselves to be their own "interpreters" of Holy Writ, and to baptized Catholics who adhere to Modernism.

Why should a "liberal" judge pay any heed to the precise words contained in the Constitution of the United States of America when Protestants and Modernists and unbelievers can make of the words of Holy Writ whatever they want. That is, why should the words of a civil constitution be any more hallowed or sacred than the words of Sacred Scripture. If one can deconstruct the Word of God, my friends, it is relatively easy to deconstruct the words of a civil constitution. Those who reject the authority of the Catholic Church to be the sole guardian and infallible explicator of all that is contained in Divine Revelation, which consists of Sacred Scripture and Apostolic or Sacred Tradition, and who reject her authority to exercise the Social Reign of Christ the King in the civil realm must create a substitute "authority" to guide them, and that substitute authority in a civil state founded on the false premises of naturalism will become, sooner or later, the state itself, which becomes the true secular "church" from which no one can dissent legitimately.

The men who founded the United States of America, sons of the rationalistic "Enlightenment" that was the logical step-child of the Protestant Revolt, did not understand this. These men, many of whom had a founding hatred for Christ the King, decided to break away from British rule at a time when the aggregate total of taxes, duties, levies and imposts paid by the colonists was around seven percent of the average colonist's income. These men could not have fathomed a situation where the government they founded would tax up to thirty-three percent of the top income-earners in the United States of America, a situation where the average taxpayer is paying something close to half of his annual income in Federal, state and local taxes (including school taxes, property taxes, special service (water, sewer) district taxes). These men could not have fathomed a situation where the legitimate Natural Law rights and liberties of men that they believed were being violated by King George III and his minions would be even more suppressed by the very government they founded. They could not have fathomed this two hundred thirty-three years ago precisely because they believed that it was a sign of "progress" for men to be "free" of the "constraints" imposed by the dogmas of denominational religion, thus dooming us to be but the mere creatures of the state.

Back with me? Do those of you with perfect recall remember the article that these paragraphs came from? Think now. Think really hard. There, I knew you would remember. Sure, it's Let Me Know How the Commies Tip! Good job.

Why did I choose to copy and paste these paragraphs for this current article? Because I am tired! Very tired. There are certain articles where I've written things that I simply don't how to put any better. Why reinvent the wheel, huh? Longtime readers could use a refresher course. Newer readers might never have seen this before.

Oh, yes, I chose to reprise these paragraphs in this current article because I heard an unbelievably quintessential example of Protestant/Judeo-Masonic/Americanist semi-Pelagianism yesterday on the radio. "Wait a minute," I can hear some cynic out there holler. "You've written that you don't listen to the radio any more, that is, to the blathering talking heads, as you call them." Sure, that's right. I do, when by myself running errands without Sharon and Lucy, listen to the news and weather. "Oh." Oh? Is that all you can say? No apology to me for coming to a rash judgment? Oh?

As I was trying to tell you all before I was interrupted by that know-it-all who keeps asking all of these inane questions, I was listening to WABC Radio 77 around noontime yesterday. There were two talk show hosts (I don't know their names) who were blathering on about how "great" they aim to be in their work. One of them said in almost exactly the following words, "We can be great on our own." I guess the point of the "conversation," more accurately, of course, an exercise in community self-congratulations worthy of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service itself, which in and of itself is a celebration of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic spirit in many respects, was to emphasize that we don't need the government to make us "great." The hosts obviously did not believe that they needed Christ the King or the teaching or the sanctifying offices of His true Church to be great. One of them actually said, "We can be great on our own."

Such a belief is of the essence of the spirit of semi-Pelagianism, which is the foundation of much, although not all, of Protestantism and the entirety of Judeo-Masonry, as Father Denis Fahey explained in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

“Masonry is, therefore, a naturalistic society, that is to say, a society which claims to make men good and true, independently of the Supernatural Life which comes to us from the Divinity of Christ through His sacred Humanity. In reality it is only through that Life that we can be really virtuous men and live fully ordered lives. Masonry thus, in fact and in deed, puts itself in the place of the visible Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. The attitude of indifference and superiority to national differences and distinctions affected by Masonry is a mere aping of the true supranationalism of the Catholic Church, so eminently respectful of the true concept of national traits and true glories. The pretended supranationalism of Masonry can only lead to the corruption of the true concept of nationalism and to the destruction of all that is enshrined for us in the words ‘native land.’ It has its logical issue in national enslavement under a world-republic.

“Masonry’s claim to make men good, while inculcating indifference to the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, is already implicitly the divinization of man, for it makes many natural resources superior to the Life which comes from Him to us. The inner esoteric significance of its symbolism, by which the minds of its adepts are moulded, is the unabashed proclamation of man’s divinity, tendering inevitably towards the deification of the generative powers of the human race; this is the hidden meaning of the two interlaced triangles which figure so prominently on Masonic buildings as the crowning insult offered by Satan to the Blessed Trinity.”

 

Pope Leo XIII had said much the same thing in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:

 

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

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

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

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

 

We can be "great" on our own? What did Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ teach us?

I am the true vine; and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me, that beareth not fruit, he will take away: and every one that beareth fruit, he will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now you are clean by reason of the word, which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine: you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing. (John 15: 1-5.)

 

And no one can truly know, love, and serve Our Lord except as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church and in cooperation with the graces He won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

We can be "great" on our own? No, the exaltation of natural virtues over the supernatural virtues, something that is of the essence of Americanism, was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899:

It is hard to understand how those who are imbued with Christian principles can place the natural ahead of the supernatural virtues, and attribute to them greater power and fecundity. Is nature, then, with grace added to it, weaker than when left to its own strength? And have the eminently holy men whom the Church reveres and pays homage to, shown themselves weak and incompetent in the natural order, because they have excelled in Christian virtue? Even if we admire the sometimes splendid acts of the natural virtues, how rare is the man who really possesses the habit of these natural virtues? Who is there who is not disturbed by passions, sometimes of a violent nature, for the persevering conquest of which man must needs have some divine help? If we scrutinize more closely the particular acts We have above referred to, we shall discover that sometimes they have more the appearance than the reality of virtue. But let us grant that these are real. If we do not wish to run in vain, if we do not wish to lose sight of the eternal blessedness to which God in His goodness has destined us, of what use are the natural virtues unless of the gift and strength of divine grace be added? Aptly does St. Augustine say: ‘Great power, and a rapid pace, but out of the course.’ For as the nature of man, because of our common misfortune, fell into vice and dishonor, yet by the assistance of grace is lifted up and borne onward with new honor and strength; so also the virtues which are exercised not by the unaided powers of nature, by the help of the same grace, are made productive of a supernatural beatitude and become solid and enduring.

 

It is the delusional lie that men can be "great" on their own that is responsible for keeping men so intent on maintaining their civil liberty enslaved to the falsehoods of Modernity that have helped to bring about the triumph of statism and the gradual repression of any true notion of that civil liberty in according with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. We need Our Lord and His Catholic Church. We need the help of His Most Blessed Mother and His foster-father, Saint Joseph, and our Guardian Angels and Patron Saints. We cannot be "great" on our own.

Lent is but one week away from today. We have been in the season of Septuagesima for ten days now. Are we preparing to make the best Lent of our lives as we seek to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world by offering all of our prayers and our worthy receptions of Holy Communion and our sufferings and our sacrifices and our humiliations to the throne of the Most Blessed Trinity through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit? In order to be truly "great" for all eternity we must die to self and accept with joy and with supreme gratitude each of the crosses that are sent to us by the loving hand of Our Lord to be given back to Him through His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart as we seek to give Him honor and glory through that maternal heart out of which His own Most Sacred Heart was formed. In order to be truly "great" for all eternity we must humble ourselves in this life and consider our privilege to be humbled in the sight of men as we seek to give honor and glory to God in all that we do as the totally consecrated slaves of Christ the King through Mary our Immaculate Queen.

We must pray for the conversion of all men and all nations to Catholic Faith so that they will yoke themselves to the true standard of liberty, Christ the King's Holy Cross, as they give unto Him all of their daily actions through the Immaculate Heart of Mary that was pierced through and through as her Divine Son's Most Precious Blood was shed to save us from the fires of Hell. Then and only then will men have a claim on true greatness for all eternity as their nations pursue the common temporal good in light of their one and only Last End, possession of the Beatific Vision of the Most Blessed Trinity in Heaven forever.

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Scholastica, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints