Broken Clocks

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. For the wrong reason: they are broken.

Even the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America can be right (unanimously . . . . even, to paraphrase Snagglepuss, the cartoon mountain lion who was voiced by Dawes Butler, who patterned the voice of Snagglepuss after that of Bert "The Cowardly Lion" Lahr, just as the voice of the fictional Captain Peter Peachfuzz on Rocky and His Friends--which became The Bullwinkle Show in 1961--by the late Bill Scott in the befuddled pattern of Ed Wynn) now and again. Now and again. Usually for the wrong reason.

Such was the case yesterday when, by a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of the United States of America (SCOTUS) rejected an intervention by Barack Hussein Obama's Department of Justice that supported the contention of a teacher who had been fired by a Lutheran church that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America guaranteed governmental non-interference in the internal affairs of the various churches (one true, the rest false, of course) that exist here in the United States of America.

The outcome was correct. The reasoning was flawed.

Oral arguments were heard in the case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C. on Wednesday, October 5, 2011. Unsurprisingly, an attorney from the United States Department of Justice argued in favor of the woman who had been fired, prompting sharp interrogatory comments from two associate justices at different ends of the high court's ideological divide, Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan, who was the Obama administration's Solicitor General before she Obama nominated her to serve on the court on May 10, 2010 (see Three Out of Nine, Something That Matters):

At Supreme Court arguments on Wednesday, the justices struggled to find a theory that would strike the right balance between avoiding government interference in the internal affairs of religious groups while protecting employees from discrimination. They often seemed frustrated by the available approaches.

There was widespread agreement, for instance, that the federal government’s proposed approach, which gives limited weight to the First Amendment’s religion clauses in disputes between religious groups and their employees, is too narrow.

Leondra R. Kruger, a lawyer for the government, said the court’s analysis should be essentially the same whether the employer accused of discrimination was a labor union or a church.

“That is extraordinary,” Justice Antonin Scalia responded. “We are talking here about the free exercise clause and about the establishment clause, and you say they have no special application?”

Justice Elena Kagan agreed. “I, too, find that amazing,” she said. (Supreme Court Puzzles Over Religious Groups and Bias.)

 

Although Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Barack Hussein Obama on May 26, 2009 (see Six Out of Nine, Not That It Matters), was a little skeptical of the claim made by the Lutheran branch sect's attorney that the First Amendment gave religious bodies a wide latitude of action with respect to their employees, even she had been convinced, perhaps by Kagan, that the arguments advanced by the petitioner and supporter by the Obama administration's attorney Leonard Kruger were not sustainable under a proper reading of constitutional law.

The court's opinion, rendered by Chief Justice John Roberts, however, was premised upon an acceptance of the belief that a "national church" is in se something that is beneficial, especially light of the history of the English crown's interference with the ministers of the Anglican sect before the American founding:

 

Held: 1. The Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment bar suits brought on behalf of ministers against their churches, claiming termination in violation of employment discrimination laws. Pp. 6-15. (a) The First Amendment provides, in part, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Familiar with life under the established Church of England, the founding generation sought to foreclose the possibility of a national church.

By forbidding the "establishment of religion" and guaranteeing the "free exercise thereof," the Religion Clauses ensured that the new Federal Government--unlike the English Crown--would have no role in filling ecclesiastical offices. Pp. 6- 10. (b) This Court first considered the issue of government interference with a church's ability to select its own ministers in the context of disputes over church property. This Court's decisions in that area confirm that it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church's determination of who can act as its ministers. See Watson v. Jones, 13 Wall. 679; Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in North America, 344 U. S. 94; Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for United States and Canada v. Milivojevich, 426 U. S. 696. Pp. 10-12. (c) Since the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other employment discrimination laws, the Courts of Appeals have uniformly recognized the existence of a "ministerial exception," grounded in the First Amendment, that precludes application of such legislation to claims concerning the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers. The Court agrees that there is such a ministerial exception. Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs. By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group's right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According the state the power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions. The EEOC and Perich contend that religious organizations can defend against employment discrimination claims by invoking their First Amendment right to freedom of association. They thus see no need--and no basis--for a special rule for ministers grounded in the Religion Clauses themselves. Their position, however, is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations. The Court cannot accept the remarkable view that the Religion Clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization's freedom to select its own ministers. The EEOC and Perich also contend that Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872, precludes recognition of a ministerial exception. But Smith involved government regulation of only outward physical acts. The present case, in contrast, concerns government interference with an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself. Pp. 13-15. 2. Because Perich was a minister within the meaning of the ministerial exception, the First Amendment requires dismissal of this employment discrimination suit against her religious employer. (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C.)

Although the decision reached in this case is correct. Chief Justice Roberts, a Catholic, wrote his decision as though the entire history of England against which the "founding fathers" of the United States of America, the men who had, please remember, a founding hatred for Christ the King, reacted when they wrote the Constitution began and ended with the events that took place in that once Catholic country in the two hundred forty-two years between the time that the lecherous, bigamous, adulterous, murderous King Henry VIII had himself declared "supreme head of the church in England" in 1534 to the time of the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Such is a gross misreading of history a John Roberts' historical reference to the practices of the English crown prior with respect to the Anglican sect prior to the founding of the United States of America, however, is fallacious as those practices were institutionalized as a direct result of the Protestant Revolution in England.

Indeed, Saint Thomas a Becket fought against efforts on the part of King Henry II to interfere with the liberties of Holy Mother Church, giving up his life to do so (see A Martyr for the Church's Liberties).

To be sure, it was the case even during the era of Christendom that kings and dukes and emperors and other civil potentates tried to interfere with the internal governance of Holy Mother Church, doing so sometimes quite successfully, it should be noted, while causing a good deal of harm and confusion in the process. Pope Saint Gregory VII, however, fought fiercely about the attempt of civil leaders to invest their own symbols upon the Catholic hierarchy in their realms, sending a letter in the year 1081 to the Bishop of Metz, France, how this was a violation of the liberties of Holy Mother Church (see the appendix below).

There is no need for a "First Amendment" to establish a principle that has been defended by the Catholic Church from time immemorial, namely, that the ecclesiastical and temporal realms exercise distinct powers and are autonomous in the exercise of those powers, recognizing that civil rulers have an obligation to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven, and that it is the divine prerogative of Holy Mother Church to interpose herself as a last resort, following the exhaustion of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and sanctifying and exhorting, with those civil rulers if they proposed to do things--or have in fact done things--contrary to the good of souls. Thus it is while the two spheres are autonomous and that ecclesiastical officials are not to hold civil office and those in the latter are not hold offices in the former, civil rulers must be subordinate to the authority of the Vicar of Christ on earth and those bishops who are in communion with him. This was the point that Pope Saint Gregory VII made in 1081 when the lay investiture controversy had been raging for so long.

Pope Gelasius I had stated this very clearly in the year 1094, fully five hundred eighty-seven years before Pope Saint Gregory VII wrote his letter to the Bishop of Metz in 1081:

 

There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment. You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation. In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your will.

If the ministers of religion, recognizing the supremacy granted you from heaven in matters affecting the public order, obey your laws, lest otherwise they might obstruct the course of secular affairs by irrelevant considerations, with what readiness should you not yield them obedience to whom is assigned the dispensing of the sacred mysteries of religion. Accordingly, just as there is no slight danger m the case of the priests if they refrain from speaking when the service of the divinity requires, so there is no little risk for those who disdain - which God forbid -when they should obey. And if it is fitting that the hearts of the faithful should submit to all priests in general who properly administer divine affairs, how much the more is obedience due to the bishop of that see which the Most High ordained to be above all others, and which is consequently dutifully honored by the devotion of the whole Church.  (Letter to Emperor Anastasius)

 

Alas, men who live in the confusion of Modernity must reargue ad infinitum, ad nauseam that which was "settled," despite the reluctance of some to acknowledge this fact and the warfare that they waged against it, long, long ago. Even the Catholic Church, in an effort to avoid harming the common good and the peace and the tranquility of society, would not interfere with the internal operations of a non-Catholic religious sect as she would, for the sake of the common good, extend toleration of such a sect as she sought to convert its adherents. The Catholic Church is the sole arbiter of the proper bounds between the ecclesiastical and civil realms, not the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

This having been stated, it is nevertheless necessary to point out that our true popes in the Nineteenth Century recognized that many of the children of Holy Mother Church lived in nations that did not fulfill their obligation before God to recognize her as the true Church and to afford her the favor and protection of the civil laws. She will, therefore, avail herself of the "liberties" to be found in the constitutions and laws of the anti-Incarnational, pluralistic, religiously indifferentist civil state of Modernity in order to continue her work of teaching, governing and sanctifying her children and as she seeks with urgency the unconditional conversion of all non-Catholics to her maternal bosom, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. Contrary to the counterfeit church of conciliarism, the Catholic Church does this while conceding nothing at all to the false principles of the modern civil state.

It is telling, however, that one presidential administration after another has sought to overreach even the bounds of the Constitution to such an extent that the sensibilities of outright legal positivists of the false opposite of the "left" on the Supreme Court of the United States became outraged, as happened two days ago in the case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C. Those with short memories should be reminded that the supposedly "pro-life" administration of then President George Walker Bush and Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney, represented by the then Solicitor General of the United States of America, Theodore B. Olson, who worked with Rob Reiner in 2009 to champion the legal "right" of those engaged unnatural acts in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments to be issued "marriage certificates" by the State of California, argued

in a brief submitted on December 4, 2002, to the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Joseph Scheidler v. National Organization for Women that the work of Joseph Scheidler, the then seventy-five year-old founder of the Pro Life Action League, to save babies from execution outside of abortuaries was analogous to the sort of "racketeering" prohibited under the Hobbs Act of 1946, claiming that Scheidler was depriving legitimate business, abortuaries, of their income. And this from the "pro-life" George Walker Bush administration (applause for Bush, anyone?):

"It is irrelevant under the Hobbs Act whether the defendant is motivated by an economic purpose, as the lower courts that have addressed the issue have correctly recognized. The text of the Hobbs Act contains no requirement of an economic motive. As explained, when a person uses force or threats to compel a business to cede control over what goods or services the business will offer, the defendant obtains the victim's property by acquiring the power to decide how the business will be conducted. That conclusion holds true whether or not the defendant has a profit-making objective.

"A contrary conclusion would allow a defendant to hijack legitimate businesses by wrongful acts of violence, threats, or fear simply because the defendant had a non-economic objective. That result would defeat the government's strong interest in protecting interstate commerce under the Hobbs Act by prosecuting extortionists who are motivated by causes other than financial gain. For instance, an economic motive requirement would immunize a defendant from prosecution under the Hobbs Act even though the defendant threatened acts of murder against a bank that loaned money to foreign nations whose policies the defendant opposed, against a retail store that sold products to which the defendant objected, or against any other business that used its land or other valuable property for a purpose that the defendant found unpalatable.

"Those acts have deleterious effects on interstate commerce, whether or not the defendant directs the use of such property for his own financial gain. To exempt such conduct from the Hobbs Act would retreat from the Act's purpose to 'protect the right of citizens of this country to market their products without any interference from lawless bandits.' In sum, when the defendant uses wrongful force or threats to wrest control over the victim's business decisions, the defendant obtains that property interest." (Brief of United States Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson in the case of Joseph Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, December 4, 2002.)

 

Yes, the "pro-life" George Walker Bush administration authorized its Solicitor General to argue before the Supreme Court of the United States of America that abortuaries are legitimate businesses whose economic well-being was "threatened" by the sidewalk counseling activities of Joe Scheidler. Do you see how the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic system of government is a farce from beginning to end? And even though the Supreme Court of the United States of America rendered the correct decision in the case of Joseph Scheidler v. National Organization for Women on February 26, 2003 (see Justice for a True Pro-Life Hero), the ever-mercurial nature of American jurisprudence guarantees nothing about the future as such jurisprudence, both for "strict constructionists" and "liberal judicial activists" is founded in an interpretation of the words of men in written documents without making any reference at all to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as these have been entrusted exclusively to the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

The Bush Administration got slapped down nine years ago. So did the Obama Administration two days ago. 

The fact that the broken clock represented by the Supreme Court of the United States of America gets decisions right now and again should not be surprising. What we should remember, however, is that almost none of the litigation that comes before it would be necessary in a nation that recognized the authority of the Catholic Church on all that pertains to the good of souls.

There would be no need for sidewalk counseling in front of America's killing centers in a Catholic States of America as there would no such killing centers operating under cover of the civil law. 

There would be need to silly arguments as to the unfettered right of Holy Mother Church to hire and fire employees as she sees fit and, as noted above, she would not interfere with the internal operations of false religious sects if such existed in a Catholic States of America unless these threatened the common temporal good.

Although perhaps a subject for an article in and of itself, Holy Mother Church must engage in the thoroughly just practice of discrimination in the hiring and retention or dismissal or employees as she must make sure that the integrity of the Holy Faith is in no way jeopardize by those who dissent from even one thing contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith and, after being duly warned, are unwilling to abjure their errors and correct them publicly.

Discrimination is part of the everyday process of living, if you think about it.

We discriminate when choosing which college to attend or which person to marry or which grocery store to patronize. We choose in favor of one and not others, which is exactly what employers possessed of the sensus Catholicus should do as they seek to hire the best who is best qualified and who will work will with others in a particular work place.

To discriminate against those who defect from the Holy Faith in favor of those who do not is to do no injustice to anyone. No one has a right to pervert or distort the Faith, and the fact that the spiritual robber barons of conciliarism not only favor those who defect the from the Holy Faith but do so themselves explains why we must discriminate against them and seek out the true sacraments from true bishops and priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or its "reconciliation" with the the false principles of Modernity that have been condemned repeatedly by one true pope after another (see Appendix B below).

 

 

 

 

 

This is the time from all eternity that God has ordained for us to live. We must not rue the circumstances in which we find ourselves as to do so is to murmur  against the will of God. We must consider it as our privilege to live in these challenging times and to face whatever humiliations that come our way for rejecting the falsehoods of Modernity in the world and the of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

We must remember that the Cross is the only path to Heaven. It is the Sacrifice of the Cross that is perpetuated in an unbloody manner in every true and valid offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And it is the Cross that has become for us the true manger from which we are fed the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, He Who is King of men and also of their nations at all times and in all circumstances even if they are ignorant or contemptuous of that Kingship.

We need to be Catholics of profound Eucharistic piety as we seek to overcome the wiles of the devil in our own lives as we make reparation to he Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our own many sins that have so worsened the state of the Church Militant on earth and the world-at-large, to say nothing of how they have scandalized others and have, quite possibly, hardened the hearts of others and have kept non-Catholics out of the true Church and reaffirmed fallen away Catholics in their decision to quit the practice of the true Faith.

We must pray our Rosaries of penance every day, hoping to be able to plant a a few seeds for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which will be ushered in when a true pope consecrates Russia to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart with all of the bishops of the world in perfect fulfillment of her unreconstructed Fatima Message.

We must be about the business of looking at the world--and everything in it--solely through the eyes of the true Faith, and it from the time we spend before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament that we can be given infused graces to see the world more clearly through those eyes of the Faith and to be willing to risk everything, including suffering the loss of friendships and our "reputations," to do so lest we wind up worse than a broken clock for all eternity for refusing to see the truth and to embrace it with love, gratitude and joy.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

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Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

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Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix

Letter of Pope Saint Gregory VII to the Bishop of Metz, Germany on the Lay Investiture Controversy

Bishop Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved brother in Christ, Hermann bishop of Metz, greeting and apostolic benediction. It is doubtless owing to a dispensation of God that, as we learn, thou art ready to endure trials and dangers in defence of the truth. For such is His ineffable grace and wonderful mercy that He never allows His chosen ones completely to go astray - never permits them utterly to fall or to be cast down. For, after they have been afflicted by a period of persecution - a useful term of probation as it were, - He makes them, even if they have been for a time fainthearted, stronger than before. Since, moreover, manly courage impels one strong man to act more bravely than another and to press forward more boldly - even as among cowards fear induces one to flee more disgracefully than another, - we wish, beloved, with the voice of exhortation, to impress this upon thee: thou shouldst the more delight to stand in the army of the Christian faith among the first, the more thou art convinced that the conquerors are the most worthy and the nearest to God. Thy request, indeed, to be aided, as it were, by our writings and fortified against the madness of those who babble forth with impious tongue that the authority of the holy and apostolic see had no authority to excommunicate Henry - a man who despises the Christian law; a destroyer of the churches and of the empire; a patron and companion of heretics - or to absolve any one from the oath of fealty to him, seems to us to be hardly necessary when so many and such absolutely decisive warrants are to be found in the pages of Holy Scripture. Nor do we believe, indeed, that those who (heaping up for themselves damnation) impudently detract from the truth and contradict it have added these assertions to the audacity of their defence so much from ignorance as from a certain madness.

For, to cite a few passages from among many, who does not know the words of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who says in the gospel: 'Thou art Peter and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be bound also in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed also in Heaven'? [Matthew xvi. 18, 19.] Are kings excepted here? Or are they not included among the sheep which the Son of God committed to St Peter? Who, I ask, in view of this universal concession of the power of binding and loosing, can think that he is withdrawn from the authority of St Peter, unless, perhaps, that unhappy man who is unwilling to bear the yoke of the Lord and subjects himself to the burden of the devil, refusing to be among the number of Christ's sheep? It will help him little to his wretched liberty that he shake from his proud neck the divinely granted power of Peter. For the more any one, through pride, refuses to bear it, the more heavily shall it press upon him unto damnation at the judgement.

The holy fathers, as well in general councils as in their writings and doings, have called the Holy Roman Church the universal mother, accepting and serving with great veneration this institution founded by the divine will, this pledge of a dispensation to the church, this privilege entrusted in the beginning and confirmed to St Peter the chief of the apostles. And even as they accepted its statements in confirmation of their faith and of the doctrines of holy religion, so also they received its judgements - consenting in this, and agreeing as it were with one spirit and one voice: that all greater matters and exceptional cases, and judgements over all churches, ought to be referred to it as to a mother and a head; that from it there was no appeal; that no one should or could retract or reverse its decisions....

. . . Shall not an authority founded by laymen - even by those who do not know God, - be subject to that authority which the providence of God Almighty has for His own honour established and in his mercy given to the world? For His Son, even as He is undoubtingly believed to be God and man, so is He considered the highest priest, the head of all priests, sitting on the right hand of the Father and always interceding for us. Yet He despised a secular kingdom, which makes the sons of this world swell with pride, and came of His own will to the priesthood of the cross. Who does not know that kings and leaders are sprung from men who were ignorant of God, who by pride, robbery, perfidy, murders - in a word, by almost every crime at the prompting of the devil, who is the prince of this world - have striven with blind cupidity and intolerable presumption to dominate over their equals, that is, over mankind? To whom, indeed, can we better compare them, when they seek to make the priests of God bend to their feet, than to him who is head over all the sons of pride1 and who, tempting the Highest Pontiff Himself, the Head of priests, the Son of the Most High, and promising to Him all the kingdoms of the world, said: 'All these I will give unto Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me'?2 who can doubt but that the priests of Christ are to be considered the fathers and masters of kings and princes and of all the faithful? Is it not clearly pitiful madness for a son to attempt to subject to himself his father, a pupil his master; and for one to bring into his power and bind with iniquitous bonds him by whom he believes that he himself can be bound and loosed not only on earth but also in Heaven? This the emperor Constantine the Great, lord of all the kings and princes of nearly the whole world, plainly understood - as the blessed Gregory reminds us in a letter to the emperor Maurice, when, sitting last after all the bishops, in the holy council of Nicaea, he presumed to give no sentence of judgement over them, but addressed them as gods and decreed that they should not be subject to his judgement but that he should be dependent upon their will....

. . . Many pontiffs have excommunicated kings or emperors. For, if particular examples of such princes is needed, the blessed pope Innocent excommunicated the emperor Arcadius for consenting that St John Chrysostom should be expelled from his see. Likewise another Roman pontiff, Zachary, deposed a king of the Franks, not so much for his iniquities as because he was not fitted to exercise so great power. And in his stead he set up Pepin, father of the emperor Charles the Great, in his place - releasing all the Franks from the oath of fealty which they had sworn him. As, indeed, the holy church frequently does by its authority when it absolves servitors from the fetters of an oath sworn to such bishops as, by apostolic sentence, are deposed from their pontifical rank. And the blessed Ambrose - who, although a saint, was still not bishop over the whole church - excommunicated and excluded from the church the emperor Theodosius the Great for a fault3 which, by other priests, was not regarded as very grave. He shows, too, in his writings that gold does not so much excel lead in value as the priestly dignity transcends the royal power; speaking thus towards the beginning of his pastoral letter: 'The honour and sublimity of bishops, brethren, is beyond all comparison. If one should compare them to resplendent kings and diademed princes it would be far less worthy than if one compared the base metal lead to gleaming gold. For, indeed, one can see how the necks of kings and princes are bowed before the knees of priests; and how, having kissed their right hands, they believe themselves strengthened by their prayers.' And a little later: 'Ye should know, brethren, that we have mentioned all this to show that nothing can be found in this world more lofty than priests or more sublime than bishops.'

Furthermore every Christian king, when he comes to die, seeks as a pitiful suppliant the aid of a priest, that he may escape hell's prison, may pass from the darkness into the light, and at the judgement of God may appear absolved from the bondage of his sins. Who, in his last hour (what layman, not to speak of priests), has ever 1 Job xli. 34. 2 Matt. iv. 9. 3 A savage massacre in Thessalonica, 390, as a reprisal for a riot. implored the aid of an earthly king for the salvation of his soul? And what king or emperor is able, by reason of the office he holds, to rescue a Christian from the power of the devil through holy baptism, to number him among the sons of God, and to fortify him with the divine unction? Who of them can by his own words make the body and blood of our Lord, - the greatest act in the Christian religion? Or who of them possesses the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth? From all of these considerations it is clear how greatly the priestly office excels in power.

Who of them can ordain a single clerk in the holy Church, much less depose him for any fault? For in the orders of the Church a greater power is needed to depose than to ordain. Bishops may ordain other bishops, but can by no means depose them without the authority of the apostolic see. Who, therefore, of even moderate understanding, can hesitate to give priests the precedence over kings? Then, if kings are to be judged by priests for their sins, by whom can they be judged with better right than by the Roman pontiff?

In short, any good Christians may far more properly be considered kings than may bad princes. For the former, seeking the glory of God, strictly govern themselves, whereas the latter, seeking the things which are their own and not the things of God, are enemies to themselves and tyrannical oppressors of others. Faithful Christians are the body of the true king, Christ; evil rulers, that of the devil. The former rule themselves in the hope that they will eternally reign with the Supreme Emperor, but the sway of the latter ends in their destruction and eternal damnation with the prince of darkness, who is king over all the sons of pride.

It is certainly not strange that wicked bishops are of one mind with a bad king, whom they love and fear for the honours which they have wrongfully obtained from him. Such men simoniacally ordain whom they please and sell God even for a paltry sum. As even the elect are indissolubly united with their Head, so also the wicked are inescapably leagued with him who is the head of evil, their chief purpose being to resist the good. But surely we ought not so much to denounce them as to mourn for them with tears and lamentations, beseeching God Almighty to snatch them from the snares of Satan in which they are held captive, and after their peril to bring them at last to a knowledge of the truth.

We refer to those kings and emperors who, too much puffed up by worldly glory, rule not for God but for themselves. Now, since it belongs to our office to admonish and encourage every one according to the rank or dignity which he enjoys, we endeavour, by God's grace, to arm emperors and kings and other princes with the weapon of humility, that they may be able to allay the waves of the sea and the floods of pride. For we know that earthly glory and the cares of this world usually tempt men to pride, especially those in authority. So that they neglect humility and seek their own glory, desiring to lord it over their brethren. Therefore it is of especial advantage for emperors and kings, when their minds tend to be puffed up and to delight in their own glory, to discover a way of humbling themselves, and to realize that what causes their complacency is the thing which should be feared above all else. Let them, therefore, diligently consider how perilous and how much to be feared is the royal or imperial dignity. For very few are saved of those who enjoy it; and those who, through the mercy of God, do come to salvation are not so glorified in the Holy Church by the judgement of the Holy Spirit as are many poor people. For, from the beginning of the world until our own times, in the whole of authentic history we do not find seven emperors or kings whose lives were as distinguished for religion and so adorned by miracles of power as those of an innumerable multitude who despised the world - although we believe many of them to have found mercy in the presence of God Almighty. For what emperor or king was ever so distinguished by miracles as were St Martin, St Antony and St Benedict - not to mention the apostles and martyrs? And what emperor or king raised the dead, cleansed lepers, or healed the blind? See how the Holy Church praises and venerates the Emperor Constantine of blessed memory, Theodosius and Honorius, Charles and Louis as lovers of justice, promoters of the Christian religion, defenders of the churches: it does not, however, declare them to have been resplendent with such glorious miracles. Moreover, to how many kings or emperors has the holy church ordered chapels or altars to be dedicated, or masses to be celebrated in their honour? Let kings and other princes fear lest the more they rejoice at being placed over other men in this life, the more they will be subjected to eternal fires. For of them it is written: 'The powerful shall powerfully suffer torments.' And they are about to render account to God for as many men as they have had subjects under their dominion. But if it be no little task for any private religious man to guard his own soul: how much labour will there be for those who are rulers over many thousands of souls? Moreover, if the judgement of the Holy Church severely punishes a sinner for the slaying of one man, what will become of those who, for the sake of worldly glory, hand over many thousands to death? And such persons, although after having slain many they often say with their lips 'I have sinned,' nevertheless rejoice in their hearts at the extension of their (so-called) fame. They do not regret what they have done. Nor are they grieved at having sent their brethren down to Tartarus. As long as they do not repent with their whole heart, nor agree to give up what they have acquired or kept through bloodshed, their repentance remains without the true fruit of penitence before God.

Therefore they should greatly fear and often call to mind what we have said above, that out of the innumerable host of kings in all countries from the beginning of the world, very few are found to have been holy; whereas in one single see - the Roman - of the successive bishops from the time of blessed Peter the Apostle, nearly one hundred are counted amongst the most holy. And why is this, unless because kings and princes, enticed by vain glory, prefer, as has been said, their own things to things spiritual, whereas the bishops of the Church, despising vain glory, prefer God's will to earthly things? The former are quick to punish offences against themselves, but lightly tolerate those who sin against God. The latter readily pardon those who sin against themselves, but do not readily forgive offenders against God. The former, too bent on earthly achievements, think little of spiritual ones; the latter, earnestly meditating on heavenly, things, despise the things of earth....  (Letter of Pope Gregory VII to the Bishop of Metz, 1081.)

Appendix B

The Consistent Teaching of the Catholic Church Condemning Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State

(With explanatory text extracted from an earlier article)

 

For how can We tolerate with equanimity that the Catholic religion, which France received in the first ages of the Church, which was confirmed in that very kingdom by the blood of so many most valiant martyrs, which by far the greatest part of the French race professes, and indeed bravely and constantly defended even among the most grave adversities and persecutions and dangers of recent years, and which, finally, that very dynasty to which the designated king belongs both professes and has defended with much zeal - that this Catholic, this most holy religion, We say, should not only not be declared to be the only one in the whole of France supported by the bulwark of the laws and by the authority of the Government, but should even, in the very restoration of the monarchy, be entirely passed over? But a much more grave, and indeed very bitter, sorrow increased in Our heart - a sorrow by which We confess that We were crushed, overwhelmed and torn in two - from the twenty-second article of the constitution in which We saw, not only that "liberty of religion and of conscience" (to use the same words found in the article) were permitted by the force of the constitution, but also that assistance and patronage were promised both to this liberty and also to the ministers of these different forms of "religion". There is certainly no need of many words, in addressing you, to make you fully recognize by how lethal a wound the Catholic religion in France is struck by this article. For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me." (Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814.)

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.

But for the other painful causes We are concerned about, you should recall that certain societies and assemblages seem to draw up a battle line together with the followers of every false religion and cult. They feign piety for religion; but they are driven by a passion for promoting novelties and sedition everywhere. They preach liberty of every sort; they stir up disturbances in sacred and civil affairs, and pluck authority to pieces. (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." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1964.)

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, 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. . . . To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error (Pope Leo XII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

There are others, somewhat more moderate though not more consistent, who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the divine law, but not the morality of the State, for that in public affairs the commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely disregarded in the framing of laws. Hence follows the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State. But the absurdity of such a position is manifest. Nature herself proclaims the necessity of the State providing means and opportunities whereby the community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say, according to the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness and justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no attention to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enactments. Besides, those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but still more to consult the welfare of men's souls in the wisdom of their legislation. But, for the increase of such benefits, nothing more suitable can be conceived than the laws which have God for their author; and, therefore, they who in their government of the State take no account of these laws abuse political power by causing it to deviate from its proper end and from what nature itself prescribes. And, what is still more important, and what We have more than once pointed out, although the civil authority has not the same proximate end as the spiritual, nor proceeds on the same lines, nevertheless in the exercise of their separate powers they must occasionally meet. For their subjects are the same, and not infrequently they deal with the same objects, though in different ways. Whenever this occurs, since a state of conflict is absurd and manifestly repugnant to the most wise ordinance of God, there must necessarily exist some order or mode of procedure to remove the occasions of difference and contention, and to secure harmony in all things. This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life  (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, June 20, 1888.)

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.)

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.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is, of course, just a partial listing of the constant teaching (God cannot contradict Himself, ladies and gentlemen; the Catholic Church can never be spotted by any taint of error or contradiction) of the Catholic Church on the absolute necessity of the civil state recognizing her as the true religion and of the Social Reign of Christ the King that such a recognition makes possible. Sure, as has been noted on this site most repeatedly, Holy Mother Church must make concessions to the actual realities of a given situation where she is favored with the protection of the law, doing so without ever conceding the nonexistent validity of the separation of Church and State and without ever once relenting in teaching her children what the correct doctrine is and exhorting them to plant the seeds for the restoration of the Catholic City. Pope Leo XIII made this point clear in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895:

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.)

 

A system of civil governance that fosters conditions that are inimical to man's last end is bound to degenerate over the course of time into a such a state of lawlessness that a "state religion" will be imposed by the brute force of the the civil state, namely, that of statism itself, the worship of the state and of its leaders as omniscient and omnipotent. The antidote to this is not found in any naturalistic philosophy, such as libertarianism or conservatism, but in Catholicism alone. There is no way--as in no way--to retard the evils caused by the separation of Church and State wrought by Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry and their actual, concrete expressions in the American and French Revolutions except by planting the seeds for the conversion of men and their nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes in none of this. "His" way represents that of "progress." Past "popes" were imprisoned by the limits of the "paradigms" in which they found themselves, unable to "escape" from a mentality of living in what he, Ratzinger/Benedict, has called "the Catholic ghetto." Let me repeat so as to make myself understood very clearly: Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is an enemy of the Social Reign of Christ the King and thus of the good of the very civil states he believes have been "helped" by the separation of Church and State as social order is dependent upon the the state of the souls of individual human beings, who must strive at all times to cooperate with Sanctifying Grace to live in accord with the binding precepts found in Deposit of Faith.

Pope Pius XI, writing in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, exhorted us to be soldiers in army of Christ the King:

Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: "His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ." Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. "Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved." He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. "For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?" If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. "With God and Jesus Christ," we said, "excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation."

When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord's regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen's duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. "You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men." If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished.

If the kingdom of Christ, then, receives, as it should, all nations under its way, there seems no reason why we should despair of seeing that peace which the King of Peace came to bring on earth -- he who came to reconcile all things, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, who, though Lord of all, gave himself to us as a model of humility, and with his principal law united the precept of charity; who said also: "My yoke is sweet and my burden light." Oh, what happiness would be Ours if all men, individuals, families, and nations, would but let themselves be governed by Christ! "Then at length," to use the words addressed by our predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, twenty-five years ago to the bishops of the Universal Church, "then at length will many evils be cured; then will the law regain its former authority; peace with all its blessings be restored. Men will sheathe their swords and lay down their arms when all freely acknowledge and obey the authority of Christ, and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father". . . .

If We ordain that the whole Catholic world shall revere Christ as King, We shall minister to the need of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities. This evil spirit, as you are well aware, Venerable Brethren, has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God's religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano; we lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.

Moreover, the annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them. While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.

 

We should consider our privilege to run the risk of whatever calumnies may come our way for being steadfast in behalf of the cause of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, offering to the Most Sacred Heart of Our King all of our sufferings and humiliations for reminding everyone, including the apostates in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who believe are the latter-day apostles of the heresy of Americanism, that He must rule over men and nations, making this offering to Him through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother. (See also Open Letter to Pretended Catholic Scholars, Scholarship in Conciliarism's Land of Oz and, of course, Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics and Contribute to the Rise of Conciliarism.)