Even Luther Had Regrets at the End
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Revolutions, yes, each and every one of them are from the devil. The first revolt occurred when he rebelled against God and was cast down into Hell with all of the minions who followed him for all eternity by Saint Michael the Archangel, who defended the honor and majesty and glory and power of God, Who had created Lucifer and his minions out of nothing. This initial revolution of the fallen angels has precipitated all other revolutions on the face of this earth, including the one that took place in the Garden of Eden that is responsible for our having a fallen human nature.
Revolutionaries become blinded by their demonic cause, almost never realizing--or realizing only much later in the life--the logical consequences that must flow from their ideas and their concrete realization, which comes more often than not in the shedding of a great deal of blood and/or a severe persecution waged against those who resist the "revealed truth" contained in those revolutionary ideas.
The founders of the United States of America could not have imagined that the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles upon which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are founded would produce the social chaos that we see before our very eyes. Many, although not all, of them would be horrified by seeing the inability of the institutions they created to inspire citizens to the pursuit of "civic virtue."
The founders did not believe that it was not necessary for men to submit themselves at all times and in all places, whether acting individually or collectively with others, to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication so as to realize order in their own lives or in the life of the new nation. And, of course, the founders did not believe that it was necessary for men to have belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace in order to be virtuous. Men possessed of such ideas could not see that the size and the scope of governmental power at all levels (state, local, nation) were bound to increase to the point of statist control of practically every aspect of human life. Similarly, the founders could not that the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic ideals that guided the founding of the United States of America would give rebirth over the course of time to a barbarism that would have shocked and displeased most of them. They did not live long enough to see these results.
The leader of the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ established to effect man's return to him through the Catholic Church, the nefarious, vile, vulgar and truly anti-Semitic lecherous drunkard named Martin Luther, did live long enough to see where his revolution led the men who followed him, failing to realize that he was responsible for the descent of his "evangelicals" into barbarism.
The assumption that Protestantism brought a higher and purer moral life to the nations that came under its influence does not need elaborate refutation. It is a fact of uncontroverted history that "public morality did at once deteriorate to an appalling degree wherever Protestantism was introduced. Not to mention robberies of church goods, brutal treatment meted out to the clergy, secular and regular, who remained faithful, and the horrors of so many wars of religion," we have the express testimony of [Martin] Luther himself and several other leaders of the revolt, such as [Martin] Bucer and [Philip] Melancthon, as to the evil effects of their teaching; and this testimony is confirmed by contemporaries. Luther's own avowals on this matter are numberless. Thus he writes:
"There is not one of our Evangelicals, who is not seven times worse than before he belonged to us, stealing the goods of others, lying, deceiving, eating, getting drunk, and indulging in every vice, as if he had not received the Holy Word. If we have been delivered from one spirit of evil, seven others worse than the first have come to take its place."
And again:
"Men who live under the Gospel are more uncharitable, more irascible, more greedy, more avaricious than they were before as Papists."
Even Erasmus, who had at first favoured Luther's movement, was soon disillusioned. Thus he writes:
"The New Gospel has at least the advantage of showing us a new race of men, haughty, impudent, cunning, blasphemous . . . quarrellers, seditious, furious, to whom I have, to say truth, so great an antipathy that if I knew a place in the world free of them, I would not hesitate to take refuge therein."
That these evil effects of Protestantism were not merely temporary--the accidental results of the excitement and confusion which are peculiar to a stage of transition (although they were no doubt intensified thereby)--is shown from present-day statistics. The condition of domestic morality is usually best indicated by the statistics of divorce, and of illegitimate births, and by the proportion of legitimate children to the number of marriages; while statistics of general criminality, where they can be had, would convey a fair idea of the individual and public morality in any given place. According to these tests Protestant countries are at the present day much inferior to Catholic countries in domestic and public morality.
The following examples will help to illustrate this:
Italy, Spain and Ireland are perhaps the most Catholic countries of the world, while Britain, the United States of America, with Denmark and Scandinavia, are the most Protestant. Legalised divorce does not exist at all (1930-1931) in any country of the former group. It exists in all the countries of the latter group; and the number of divorces is increasing year by year. In England and Wales there were 3,740 divorces in 1928, being about one divorce to every 114 marriages. In the United States of America the number of divorces in 1916 was 112,031, being one divorce in every 10 marriages. Ten years later (viz., in 1926), the number of divorces reached the appalling total of 181,000, being about one to every seven marriages. The statistics of illegitimate births tell a similar tale. Thus in 1927 the proportion of illegitimate births was at 44 per 1,000 for England and Wales, and 29 per 1,000 for th Irish Free State.
Again, the Irish Free State has a very high proportion of births to marriages, one of the highest in Europe. England, where the birth-rate has now fallen to nearly 16 per 1,000, has the lowest birth-rate in the world as compared with the marriage rate. While all Catholic countries have a fairly high birth-rate, the birth-rate is so low in some Protestant or non-Catholic countries that the human race there is hastening to extinction. This is in fact what has occurred to the original Protestant settlers in the New England States of America, who have practically disappeared, being in large measure supplanted by the Irish, the Canadians and others.
Exact statistics of criminality are difficulty to obtain; and trustworthy comparisons between different countries are more difficult still. Anyone, however, who remembers the constant recurrence of the ceremony of presenting "white gloves" to the judges of the criminal courts in Ireland owing to the complete absence of criminal indictments a few years ago, when the country was in its normal state, and contrasts this fact with the records of the criminal courts of Great Britain and U.S.A. may draw his own conclusions.
It has been not inaptly said that "greed, robbery, oppression, rebellion, repression, wars, devastation, depredation, would be a fitting inscription on the tomb of early Protestantism." We shall see that the latter effects of the new religion, though no so violent or dramatic, have fulfilled the promise of its earlier years. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, first published in 1932, republished by Roman Catholic Books, pp. 102-104.)
Blinded by the sins of his pride and lust, Martin Luther could not see that he had let loose demonic forces that would result over the course of the centuries in the return of barbarism as the lowest common denominator in civil society Indeed, Luther even tried to fight against Antinomianism, the belief that it was no longer necessary for men to observe the moral law once they were "justified" by confessing their "faith" in their hearts and on their lips in the Name of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (in other words, that men could do anything they wanted to and still save their souls), without realizing the simple, inescapable fact (that certainly escaped him!) that Luther's own heretical views of "justification by faith alone" had given rise to Antinomianism. He was blind. He could not see the truth before his very eyes.
Well, it is the case that an aging revolutionary, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, has lived long enough to see the demonic forces that he helped to unleash at the "Second" Vatican Council spiral out of control. Mind you, he is still as true to these revolutionary forces as "constitutionalists" and other Americans are "true" to the "founding principles" as as Martin Luther remained to his own heresies. Like the Americanists and Luther, Ratzinger/Benedict simply cannot see that the very conciliar revolution that he helped to bring about and to institutionalize is responsible for phenomena that might horrify him but about which he is able to do nothing. Revolutions frequently eat their own if their originators live long enough to see the results of what they have wrought.
To wit, the horrific display of "aboriginal dancing" (much of it done by Australians who did not appear to be "aboriginal" except in their deportment) prior to and during the simulation of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney, Australia, at the close of "World Youth Day 2008" on Sunday, July 20, 2008, seemed to displease the false "pontiff" as he sat in his makeshift "throne" on the makeshift stage. This displeasure was particularly evident during a "dance" preformed by dancers and seminarians from the Fiji Islands during the Novus Ordo service, which I watched on my computer via a link that was sent to me by a reader (which link I will not provide as it is not fit viewing material for children--or for any of us, really!--and there is no need for more people to see the sort of gross immodesty that we can see on our very streets without having to go to an internet site to look for it).
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was powerless to stop this display of paganism and indecency that was taking place before his very eyes in the context of what purported to be a legitimate offering of the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. How could he stop it? Paragraphs 394-397 of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal permit what is called the "inculturation of the Gospel as long as a particular "episcopal" conference seeks the approval of the conciliar Vatican for certain experimentations, which may or may not become "standard" after a certain period of time.
Ratzinger/Benedict's own Master of Ceremonies, "Monsignor" Guido Marini, and other members of the "papal" planning staff were fully aware of what would take place. How could he, Ratzinger/Benedict, put a stop to a parade of indecency that was performed for purely gratuitous, voyeuristic reasons to "display" the "indigenous" culture of a land that never knew the Social Reign of Christ the King (unlike most parts of what became the United States of America, which did know that Social Reign prior to the arrival of the English and the Dutch--and the expansion of Protestant and Masonic "pioneers" into parts of the United States of America that were once in the control of the French and/or the Spanish) when his own revolutionary embrace of "other religions" extols practices and beliefs of actual devil-worshipers, whom he believes can "contribute" to social order and world "peace."
As noted just yesterday in Learning from the Devil Himself, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI wants to "listen to the spiritual experience of other religions:"
The Church shares these observations with other religions. Motivated by charity, she approaches dialogue believing that the true source of freedom is found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Christians believe it is he who fully discloses the human potential for virtue and goodness, and he who liberates us from sin and darkness. The universality of human experience, which transcends all geographical boundaries and cultural limitations, makes it possible for followers of religions to engage in dialogue so as to grapple with the mystery of life’s joys and sufferings. In this regard, the Church eagerly seeks opportunities to listen to the spiritual experience of other religions. We could say that all religions aim to penetrate the profound meaning of human existence by linking it to an origin or principle outside itself. Religions offer an attempt to understand the cosmos as coming from and returning to this origin or principle. Christians believe that God has revealed this origin and principle in Jesus, whom the Bible refers to as the "Alpha and Omega" (cf. Rev 1:8; 22:1).
My dear friends, I have come to Australia as an ambassador of peace. For this reason, I feel blessed to meet you who likewise share this yearning and the desire to help the world attain it. Our quest for peace goes hand in hand with our search for meaning, for it is in discovering the truth that we find the sure road to peace (cf. Message for World Day of Peace, 2006). Our effort to bring about reconciliation between peoples springs from, and is directed to, that truth which gives purpose to life. Religion offers peace, but more importantly, it arouses within the human spirit a thirst for truth and a hunger for virtue. May we encourage everyone – especially the young – to marvel at the beauty of life, to seek its ultimate meaning, and to strive to realize its sublime potential!
With these sentiments of respect and encouragement, I commend you to the providence of Almighty God, and I assure you of my prayers for you and your loved ones, the members of your communities, and all the citizens of Australia. (Meeting with representatives of other religions in the Chapter Hall of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, July 18, 2008.)
How can Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI express a desire to "learn to the spiritual experience of other religions" and then show even the faintest trace of displeasure on his face when those who are "performing" rituals that come from these false religions are before his very eyes in the context of a "Mass" that is "open" to the "inculturation" of such rituals into its own rubrics and ceremonies, whether liturgical or "paraliturgical"?
Such are the incongruities of the contradictions inherent in the conciliar revolution that one of the chief revolutionaries himself, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, does not see how incongruous it is to suggest that the Catholic Church has something to "learn" from false religions while not seeing how such a sentiment is indeed responsible for the displays that appeared to shock his sensibilities just two days later. Then again, Ratzinger/Benedict lives in a world of incongruity, distributing what purports be "Holy Communion" on the tongue to those who knelt before him to receive at Saint Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday, July 19, 2008, while at the same time conciliar "priests" were distributing "Holy Communion" in the hand to those who stood before them--and a day before he himself distributed "Holy Communion" in the hand to those standing at Randwick Racecourse. The counterfeit church of conciliarism is world of contradiction and paradox and incongruity.
The "aboriginal" dancers at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney, Australia, two days ago were received at the base of the stage upon which the Novus Ordo table was placed by somber looking men dressed in liturgical vestments. Ratzinger/Benedict himself was led in a procession by indecently attired men at one point before the service. What kind of signal does this send to Catholic-hating Protestants and evangelicals who believe that such scandalous behavior is indeed the handiwork of the "whore of Babylon," as they see it, the Catholic Church? And by what stretch of logic can any "conservative" or traditionally-minded Catholic attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism utter a single word in protest when some similar travesty takes place in his own conciliar-controlled parish or diocese or at a local conciliar convent or monastery or college or university? How can any sane Catholic think that a travesty such as the one that took place in front of the "pope" himself is going to be stopped at the local level by "letter writing" to conciliar authorities in Rome?
And how can anyone, despite his own sins, who loves the Mother of God not see that the devil was mocking, as he mocked the Faith itself, as two burly, grossly obese white men wearing attire that would have put Johnny Weismuller in Tarzan to shame carried the traditional icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help? Who is going to call for Rosaries of reparation for the offense given to the Mother of God, she is the Queen of all virtues, including that of modesty itself? How can a "pope" walk serenely as he waves to the crowd as the Mother of God is so dishonored and blasphemed?
Oh, I suppose there will be some who say that the "pope" had no choice in the matter, that he is the "prisoner" of bad advisers in the Vatican.
That's a pretty old line, my friends. I used it a lot in my "conservative" days. Those who use such excuses in this case, however, have to reckon with the fact that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI had three years to "correct" the "abuses" he witnessed during World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany, which he "inherited" from the recently-deceased Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, and with the nasty little fact that organizers for the "youth rally" at Saint Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York, on Saturday, April 19, 2005, were not given any signals from "papal" organizers to exclude any kind of "rock" music from the "festivities" held before the "pope's arrival on the grounds to give his allocution and to listen to a traditional rendition of the Ave Maria. And the "surrounded by bad advisers" line becomes pretty farcical when one considers that no one told Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to get up out of his "papal throne" at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, April 17, 2008, and then to esteem with great joy the symbols of five false religions.
Has not Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praised one of his chief mentors, Hans Urs von Balthasar, for wanting to "raze the bastions," which he himself called a "long-overdue task?"
Does this mean that the Council should be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the "demolition of the bastions" is a long-overdue task. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p, 391.)
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI beheld before his very eyes at Randwick Racecourse on Sunday, July 20, 2008, "the demolition of the bastions" that he believed was a "long-overdue task," and, like Luther before him, he does not recognize that the bastions that he helped to tear down (including the bastion of Scholasticism that he despises) have permitted the very travesties that he seems to find discomfiting in the context of a putative offering of the Novus Ordo service held needlessly in an outdoor setting to take place. Behold the results of the "demotion of the bastions." Behind the results, each of which is from Hell.
We are not blameless for the state of the Church Militant on earth and the state of the world. We are, much like Saint Mary Magdalen, caught frequently in our sins of anger and pride and dozens of other defects. Like her, however, we we must reform our lives once and for all, responding on a daily basis to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's call to repentance, seeking out, without ever abusing, His ineffable Mercy in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance by making a good Confession to a true bishop or a true priest at least once a week, if this is at all possible given the state of apostasy and betrayal in which we live. And we must forgive others most readily--and without a moment's hesitation--as we are forgiven n the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.
We must remember that nothing anyone does to us or says about us is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and that caused His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be thrust through and through with Seven Swords of Sorrow. (And I am reminding myself of this just as much as anyone else, believe me!) We, who are the beneficiaries of the same Divine Mercy that was shown to Saint Mary Magdalen when she was caught publicly sinning against the Sixth Commandment, must be merciful to others, never holding grudges of any kind and asking for pardon as readily as we expect it to be given by Our Lord Himself through the words and actions of an alter Christus acting in persona Christi.
To this end, of course, none of us can bear any personal animus against Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI while we oppose most strenuously his revolution and his blasphemous words and sacrilegious actions. Indeed, it was very sad to see his face lined with pain as he beheld the spectacle that was taking place before his very eyes at Randwick Racecourse two days ago, on Sunday, July 20, 2008.. Very sad indeed. He does not recognize that what he beheld is the result of the false religion that he helped to let loose on the world, a false religion, conciliarism, that believes it has a "duty" to help maintain "unity" in yet another false religion, namely, Anglicanism. This is very sad, and while we oppose conciliarism and denounce the legitimacy of the conciliar officials, we must nevertheless pray for the souls of these officials, starting with Ratzinger/Benedict himself.
May Saint Mary Magdalen, who stood with Our Lady and Saint John the Evangelist at the foot of the Cross of the Divine Redeemer, help us to assist at the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary every day in offerings of Holy Mass at the hands of true bishops and true priests in the catacombs where no concessions are made to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds. Saint Mary Magdalen wept over her sins as she consoled the Divine Redeemer and His Most Blessed Mother. Can we do any less as we seek to be nourished worthily by that Divine Redeemer's very Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion at Holy Mass?
As we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permit, offering all of our prayers and sufferings and penances and mortifications and humiliations, many of which are of our very own making (!), to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we ask Saint Mary Magdalen to be steadfast in our resolve to "go, and sin no more" so that we can more worthily and efficaciously plant seeds for the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the world.
Those who plant such seeds will never have any regrets. Those who do not plant such seeds may live to have the same regrets as Martin Luther and Joseph Ratzinger. May it not be so with us!
Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.
Viva Cristo Rey!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
